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THEOPATHS THALET LEAD TO!‘ GOD 
WILBUR FISK TILLETT 


THE MacDONELL LECTURES 


This volume contains the MacDonell Lectures for 1923 
delivered before the Faculty and students of Scarritt 
Bible and Training School. The five lectures delivered 
on this Foundation constitute chapters two, four, seven, 
ten and fifteen of The Paths That Lead to God and were 
titled as follows: 


I: GOD—WHO, WHAT, AND WHERE IS HE? 
II: THROUGH NATURE TO GOD. 
III: THROUGH MAN TO GOD. 
IV: THROUGH THE BIBLE TO GOD. 
V: THROUGH CHRIST TO GOD. 


The author appreciates the courtesy shown by the Trus- 
tees and Faculty of Scarritt Bible and Training School in 
giving their consent to the publication of these lectures 
as they here appear in this larger group of subjects of 
which they constitute an integral and important part. 


THE PATHS THAT 
LEAD TO GOD 


A New Survey of the Grounds of 
Theistic and Christian Beliez 


BY / 


WILBUR FISK TILLETT 


PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE AND DEAN EMERITUS 
OF THE THEOLOGICAL FACULTY OF VANDERBILT 
UNIVERSITY , 


NEW ti YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT, 1924, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


— B- 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


Dedicated 


TO THE STUDENTS WHO FOR MANY YEARS 
HAVE BEEN TRAVELING WITH THE AUTHOR 
ALONG “THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD” 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/pathsthatleadtogOOtill 


PREPACE 


All the paths of human knowledge lead to God. In this 
faith this survey was begun, and in this faith, more deeply 
fixed than before, it now ends. 

The author cannot hope that all his arguments will appeal 
to all alike. He would be content if he might know that to 
every reader some one of these arguments should make its 
appeal and that some one of the paths that are here pointed 
out has proved a real pathway leading to a larger and stronger 
faith in God. 

This book is not written for the learned, but for learners. 
The up-to-date scientist, the erudite philosopher, the learned 
theologian will find little or nothing here to add to their knowl- 
edge or to their faith. It is written rather for young men and 
women, for students, for the inquiring layman, for those who 
seek rather than for those who have already found; and for 
those also who, having found, desire suggestions and guidance 
in helping others to find God and to know him more perfectly 
when they find him. 

Lord Bacon has somewhere compared and contrasted the 
spider and the honey-bee. The spider weaves his web entirely 
out of himself and he gathers only that he may himself con- 
sume and destroy. The honey-bee builds his multitudinous 
cells and then goes forth and gathers from abroad sweets from 
many flowers in many fields. These he combines and stores 
for others as well as for himself. My readers will find—and 
I trust appreciate the fact—that I have made the honey-bee 
and not the spider my model in the preparation of this volume. 
I have not regarded originality as the thing most needed in a 
work of this kind. I have indeed myself woven a web of 
thought and argument every thread of which is, or is at least 
meant to be, an important part of a symmetrical whole; and 


this wide-suspended web of faith in spiritual and invisible 
Vii 


Vill PREFACE 


realities is, or is at least meant to be, an ascending stairway 
up which truth-seeking souls may climb from lower to higher 
thoughts and conceptions of God. If I am to make a volume © 
of largest helpfulness to those for whom it is written, I must. 
gather intellectual sweets from many flowers and fruits from 
many thought-laden trees. 

In carrying out this desire and purpose the author has ven- 
tured in this volume more largely than is characteristic of 
works of this kind not only to refer to but to quote from a 
large number of authors whose volumes he has found helpful 
and which he wishes to commend to his readers as helpful to 
them. 

We feel confident, therefore, that neither readers nor authors 
of volumes quoted, nor their publishers, will find occasion to 
object to the more than ordinarily liberal quotations which we 
here and there make from authors whose statements of truth 
we have found especially strong and illuminating. Not only 
will these quotations be found to reinforce our own thoughts 
and arguments in a helpful way, but they will also do what 
the reading of every good book should, if possible, do—sug- 
gest to readers, who are yet learners and need such sugges- 
tions, what books they can well afford to add to their own 
libraries. And these suggestions which we are here making 
by means of apt quotations will be found to include volumes 
no longer new (such, for example, as Fairbairn’s “Philosophy 
of the Christian Religion,” Fisher’s “Grounds of Theistic and 
Christian Belief,’ Bruce’s “Apologetics,” and other volumes 
of like permanent value) as well as valuable and important 
new volumes that represent the most recent scholarship. We 
shall be disappointed if the reading of this volume does not 
lead thoughtful readers to secure and ponder profitably over 
volumes referred to and quoted from in these pages. 

The author considers himself a modern-minded man, pos- 
sessed of an open attitude towards the results of modern schol- 
arship, bearing as it does the marks of an honest and sincere 
spirit of truth-seeking. But he has not so far reacted from 
the views of the fathers of the past generation as to feel (as 
many modern apologetes and interpreters of Christianity seem 


PREFACE 1X 


to feel) that it is best to abandon entirely the time-worn argu- 
ments of the older theologians. We live in an age of transi- 
tion in matters of theological opinion, and it seems to me to 
be the part of wisdom for teachers and authors who work 
with and for the rising generation of thoughtful young men 
and women, instead of undertaking to do their thinking for 
them and telling them what they must believe, rather to en- 
courage and help them to do their own thinking. 

And how can we better show the progress of religious 
thought than by putting old and new views side by side, and 
how better stimulate young minds to see and to retain what- 
ever is good and true in the old while being open-minded 
towards the new? This is the attitude of mind that we would 
encourage in our readers. And this is to say again that we 
have not written this book for those who have already thought 
their way through modern religious problems and are satisfied 
with the conclusions they have reached; it is rather written 
for those who are in process of thinking their way through, 
and would like to have the help of a clear statement of the old 
and new views which more or less sharply divide the modern 
religious-thinking world. This present volume attempts to 
render its readers this service to a larger extent than will be 
found to characterise recent volumes in the field of theistic 
and Apologetic literature. 

No apology is needed for reproducing in this volume, here 
and there, various paragraphs and contents of articles that have 
appeared from time to time in different periodicals and re- 
ligious journals. It is fitting, however, that mention be made 
of the fact that the five lectures which it was the privilege 
of the author to deliver in the Spring of 1923 before the 
Faculty and students of the Scarritt Bible and Training School 
on the MacDonell Foundation have, with the consent of the 
authorities of that institution, been incorporated in the body 
of this volume—concerning which lectures a more detailed 
statement is made elsewhere. 

We can but think that they who with open minds and hearts 
walk along these pathways of thought, in travelling which 
multiplied thousands in all ages of human history have found 


ve PREFACE 


God, will themselves not walk in vain, but will also find them- 
selves journeying with an ever-present, never-failing Divine 
Companion. A large proportion of those who read such a 
volume as this are already theistic and Christian believers; 
and this means that such a volume should not only be adapted 
to convincing honest and truth-seeking inquirers but should 
seek to give believers a greater faith in their faith and a clearer 
vision of spiritual truths which they already see. The author 
cherishes the hope that such a double mission as this may in 
some small degree be accomplished by this volume. 

The author is not seeking in this volume to take his students 
and young readers on some short and quickly ended excursion 
for pastime and pleasure; but on a serious and extended jour- 
ney into many fields of thought, far and near, the results of 
which will affect perchance profoundly and radically not only 
their thoughts and faith in matters of religion but their pur- 
poses and plans for life. He is leading them into the broad 
open fields of nature and science, into intricate and spiritual 
realms of philosophy and psychology, as well as into the more 
familiar fields of religion and theology, to seek for and to 
find God. He is surrounding them here with a great cloud of 
witnesses, called in from many regions of research and knowl- 
edge, that he may furnish cumulative and convincing proof of 
the reality of God and of the truth of the Christian religion. 
He is introducing them to many believing thinkers and authors, 
and this for the purpose of showing them how goodly and 
great is the company of pilgrims travelling along these paths 
that lead to God. They who come to know each other in this 
pilgrimage, teachers and students, authors and readers, con- 
stitute a fellowship of truth-loving and truth-seeking souls 
into which they who enter rejoice to abide. 


Wicsur Fisk TILvett. 
Vanderbilt University, 
August 25, 1924. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER ONE 


INTRODUCTION 
A Knowledge of God Man’s Greatest Need 


I: MAN’S SEARCH FOR GOD . 


1. The Causes and Occasions ae Brennan Doubts 
and Inquiries Concerning God : 

2. Need for Retnterpreting God and Restating the 
Grounds of Theistic and Christian Faith in Our 
Day eae 3. aOR stig era i phe 


II: A SURVEY OF THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 

The Spiritual Interpretation and Use of N nlite 

Man’s Nature a Revelation of God . 

God’s Best Revealer—the' Divine-Human Christ 

The Divine-Human Book . : 

The Church a Witness for God . 

The Revelation of God Through Suffering and 
Death : 

The Use of Reason in Finding God 


eee Na 


CHAPTER Two 


THE GOD WE SEEK 
Who Is He? What Is He? Where Is He? 


t'. ANTI-THEISTIC CONCEPTIONS OF -GOD.. 


1. Polythersm : 
2. Dualism . 
3. Materialism ; 
4. Pantheism . 
5. Deism ; 
6. Agnosticism 
xi 


PAGE 


26 


27 


31 


32 
32 
33 
36 
37 
39 


40 
AI 


46 
46 
48 
49 
50 
52 
a 


Xl CONTENTS 


II; THE THEISTIC CONCEPTION OF GOD .. 55 
1. Belief in God maa eat A Phnbrias Abou 7 

Grod\\v.\\. sO 

2. Hebrew M Poe 4 : ; : ; : See 7 

BEC HIESTCEVINT FUELS I tit) aust HURL ean ho Ban a NA 

4. Theistic Dualism . A : OW 

5. ILraditional and Modern Bens TEL , Bei Ley 

III: REINTERPRETING GOD . 4 , : é : : AVE Ab) oY. 

1. Enlarging Visions of God... 3 SOR 

2. The Faith That Abides While Faiths C hange : » OE 

IV: WHERE IS GOD? . Usha 2 Ache dad) aisle ee 

I. God’s Detling eee biti Wa TL Pe yee 8 

2. God’s Omnipresence and ninonenee Mar teh Oe 

3\"'Gods Real and Abiding Presence (0. aie ee 


CHAPTER THREE 


RELIGION AND RELIGIONS AS RELATED TO GOD 


I; WHAT IS RELIGION? °. : ‘ : } Q ; Met dates 
1. The Origin of Religion L APR fe 
2. Religion as Interpreted by aeitie Evolunemere me As 


3. The Ubiquity and Influence of Religionin History . 76 


II: HEATHEN SEEKERS AFTER GOD .. oN ea 
1. The Sctence of Comparative RELI, : “WS 
2. The Religions of Ancient Babylonia and Pera EL 
Band newveligioniof ANcienti BO Vptm juan yest tt . es 
4. The Religions of Ancient Greece and Rome . Neti incr 
Til; THE FINAL TEST OF} TRUTH IN) RELIGION) 21%...) (eee 
Tid Question oo; Lthtcs oi am Baar) 
2. Error Mixed with Truth in Eenihen Rennie Me ea a 


3. The Ethical and Spiritual Religion of Christ. A Svat ey. 


CONTENTS 
CHAPTER FouR 
THROUGH NATURE TO GOD 
I: WHAT IS NATURE? 


Il: THE INORGANIC WORLD . 
1. The Physical Unwerse 
2. What is Matter? 
3. What are Atoms, M ol ccules, Radiant-Matter and 
Electrons? : ; A ‘ : f 
4. Whats Energy? . 


III: THE ORGANIC WORLD . 


1. Whence Comes Life? } 
2. Interrelations of Living Things : 


IV: THE APPEAL FROM NATURE TO NATURE’S GOD . 


1. The Analogy Between Human and Divine rere ers 
2. God in His Heavens 
3. God in His World 


V: A REASONABLE INFERENCE +! ARUP Se RYH URAC 
Paeitien God oe Crancer...'): Oi hae : 
2. The Spiritual Interpretation of Nature : 
3. Through Things Beautiful to God 


CHAPTER FIVE 


THROUGH’ SCIENCE TO’ GOD 


TOMW HAT TSSCIENCE?. 


1. The Purpose of Reiicel 
2. Scientists the Proper Teachers of Science 


II; THE DIFFERENT SCIENCES AS RELATED TO FAITH IN A PER- 
SONAL GOD . 


Through Astronomy to Co : 
Through Physics and C Rees to God 
Through Geology to God 

Through Biology to God 


are ree 


Xill 


127 
128 
129 


131 
131 
134 
136 
138 


xiv CONTENTS 


III: SCIENCE AND CHRISTIAN FAITH . 


1. Science and the Bible 
2. The Faith of Scientists 


CHAPTER SIx 


EVOLUTION AND GOD 


I: WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 
1. Materialistic and Thetstic Evolution Distnquicheae 
2. “Devolution” as Natural as Evolution 
3. Moral Evolution 


Il: THEISTIC EVOLUTION ; 
1. Evolution as Interpreted By Thee SY Hones 
Alexander Winchell, John Fiske, William North 

Rice, President H ibben, Robert A. Millikan . 
2. The Proper Attitude of Christian Believers Towards 
Evolution 2S ND BL BAER RCC Nd ; 


CHAPTER SEVEN 


THROUGH MAN TO GOD 


I: MAN’S KINSHIP TO GOD . 


1. The Divine in Man and the H uman in Wei 
2. Anthropomorphism oe OU 


II: THROUGH PSYCHOLOGY TO GOD 


Human Consciousness . 

Body and Spirit. 

Through the Intellect to God 

Through the Heart to God . 

Through the Will to God 

Through the Conscience to God . 

Through the Imagination to God ; ‘ 
The New Psychology and the Christian Faith . 
. Human Psychology and the Divine Triunity 


1 DON DAUNRw DH 


III: MAN’S SOCIAL RELATIONS AND GOD 


1. Through Parenthood to God 
2. Through Government to God . 


PAGE 
143 


143 
146. 


180 
180 
183 


186 
187 
188 
188 
190 
193 
197 
198 
201 
203 


204 


204 
206 


CONTENTS 
CHAPTER EIGHT 
THROUGH PHILOSOPHY TO GOD 


I: OURS A RATIONAL UNIVERSE . 
1. What is Philosophy? . 
2. Relation of Philosophy to Se cience 
3. Mind a Function of Spirit, Not of Matter 
4. Evidences of Mind in the Physical Universe 
5. Can Chance Explain Our World? ; 


JI: IDEALISM AND REALISM IN PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY . 
1. Philosophic and Theistic Idealism 
2. Philosophic and Theistic Realism : 
3. Truth in Philosophy Necessary to Truth in Theology 


CHAPTER NINE 


THROUGH REASON TO GOD 


I: THE NECESSITY AND VALUE OF REASON IN RELIGION . 


1. The Place of Reason in Religion 
2. The Value of Logic in Theistic Argument 


II: THE GREAT ARGUMENTS OF THEISM 

1. The Argument of Descartes, the Founder of M Been 
Philosophy . 

2. The Ontological Argument 

3. The Cosmological Argument 

4. The Teleological Argument 

5. Lhe Moral Argument 

6. Consensus Gentium 


CHAPTER TEN 


THROUGH THE Bape TO LGOD 


1: THE OLD TESTAMENT REVELATION OF GOD . 
1. God in the Pentateuch 
2. God in Hebrew History : , 
3. God in the Prophetical and A pocalyptical F W rtings ; 
4. God in the Wisdom Literature : 
5. God in the Psalms 


XV 


PAGE 
212 
214 
216 
217 
218 
220 


222 


222 
226 
229 


234 
235 
237 


239 


240 
242 
245 
247 
252 
256 


XV1 


CONTENTS 


II: THE NEW TESTAMENT REVELATION OF GOD 


ie 


The Fatherhood and Love of God 


2. The Divine Sonship of Christ , 
3. St. Paul’s Interpretation of Christ as God-Incarnate 
4. St. John’s Interpretation of Christ as Divine Love 


Incarnate 


III: SUMMARY OF THE FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS OF BIBLICAL 


Spee eS 


THEISM 

The Unity of Guan 

The Spirituality of God 

The Personality of God : : 

The Triunity of the Divine Being. 

The Post- eu as MOC a the Doctrine of 
God ; 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 


PAGE 
2609 
270 
os 
272 


274 


276 
276 


277 
278 


279 


281 


THE PROGRESSIVE’ REVETATION ‘OF GOD INVTEE 


SCRIPTURES 


I: DIVINE REVELATION AND ITS HUMAN INTERPRETATION 


IT. 


2, 


Progress of Divine Revelation Conditioned on Man’s 
Interpretation of Revelation 

Progress in Knowledge of God Retarded by Human 
Interpreters and Not by Lack of Revelation . 


II: PROGRESSIVE REVELATION OF GOD IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 


I. 


2. 


3: 


Superiority of the Early Hebrew Narratives to 
Heathen Records 

Progress from Lower to Higher Conceptions of God 
a Proof of Revelation | ; ; 

Progressive Ethicisation of the Idea of Godin 


III: PROGRESSIVE REVELATION OF GOD IN THE NEW TESTA- 


rh 


eee ee 


MENT 


Progress in the Posen of Boa Dies Tanesihn 
to Loving Fatherhood : 

Progress from an Earthly toa S piritual Messiah 

The Advent of the Holy Spirit 

Progress as Reflected in the Literature of the New 
Testament 

The Ever- enlarging Conception of God and of the 
Divine-Human Christ 


285 
285 
287 
288 
289 
290 
292 
294 
295 
296 
207 
298 


299 


CONTENTS XvVil 
6. The Finality of the Revelation of Jesus not Incon- He 
sistent with Continued Progress .  . iy Or 


CHAPTER TWELVE 


THE DIVINE INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES 


I: WHAT IS BIBLICAL INSPIRATION? . A NOT, 
1. The Traditional Doctrine of Biblical I Rlaaine 1164308 

2. The Modern Scholar’s View of Biblical Aebaiy a LO 

3. The Two Doctrines as Related to God . AR a 

4. The Bible a Divine-Human Book... Ra 

II: THE PROOFS OF INSPIRATION. YA e a ae A 
_ I. Do the Scriptures Claim to be TAted ee, Dany Out na T CS 
2. The Method of Inspiration and Revelation . . 316 

3 Lhe hrachicali Proof of) Inspiration ala), Naess ty 

4. The Internal Evidence of Inspiration 9... 319 
OME i tIneSsSeS LON LNE WV OF \ i TAM avy Maine 4h yi aee 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 


THE PLACE OF MIRACLES IN MODERN 


ME OLOGE TICS 
I: THE PLACE OF MIRACLES IN TRADITIONAL THEOLOGY. . 330 
Ldurenargqumens irom: Maracles mame ti Noite VEN st (ZO 
2. Christ and Miracles. Aaa ica 
3. The Miracles of the Old Testament. . . BR 
II: ARE MIRACLES HELPS OR HINDRANCES TO FAITH? .  . 334 
1. The Natural and the Supernatural Alike Divine . 335 
2. The Supernatural Reinforcement of the Natural . 338 
III: REACTION AGAINST MIRACLES .. Ses su rire ins 3) 
1. Radical Criticism Stated and Miaelered é 340 
2. Do Biblical Miracles Furnish Proof or Need Proof? 342 
3. Miracles, Magic and Science . , 344 
ai ihe Miracles CLUES CClEStUSIICHEN ESISEOTY Ni oul Sie tue AAS 


IV: THE REINTERPRETATION OF THE SUPERNATURAL AND RE- 
AFFIRMATION OF FAITH IN MIRACLES .  .  . 348 
1. The New Approach to the Supernatural .. SNAG 
2. A Reinterpretation of the Supernatural . . ~ 350 


XViil CONTENTS 


3. Reaffrmation of Faith in the S ee 
4. An Impressive Incident 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 


THE PROPHETS*AS TNGERPRETERS AND 
REVEALERS OF GOD 


I: THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY—ITS VALUE AND LIMITA- 
TIONS 4 
1. Prophecy Defined 
2. The Inspiration of the ‘Prophets 
3. Predictive Prophecy Sales 


II: MESSIANIC PROPHECY ‘ 
1. Christ the Fulfilment of Me essianic Prophecy . 
2. Different Interpretations of Messianic Passages 
3. Reaction Against the Argument from Predictive 
Prophecy 
4. “Accommodations” “of Prophetic Language Distin- 
guished from Fulfilments 


III: THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE AND VALUE OF PROPHECY 


1. The Prophetic Passion for Righteousness . 

2. Prophetic and mie Ideals aa Righteousness Dis- 
tinguished : 

3. Prophetic Optimism 

4. Prophetic Universalism 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 
THROUGH CHRIST TO GOD 


I; GOD AS REVEALED BY CHRIST . 


1. Christ’s Doctrine of God. 
2. The Fatherhood and Love of God 
3. Sovereignty and Service 


II: GOD AS REVEALED IN CHRIST . 


1. The Divine-Human Person . 
2. The Incarnation 


III: GOD AS REVEALED THROUGH CHRIST . 
1. Through the Human Jesus to the Divine Chast 


353 
355 


394 


3 
“toys 
399 


400 
400 
402 


405 
406 


2. The Failure of the Sceptical Hypotheses to Account 
3. The Influence of Christ on the Life of the World . 


CONTENTS 


for the Christ of Christianity . 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 


THROUGH THE CHURCH TO GOD 


I: A DIVINE-HUMAN INSTITUTION 


ry , 
2. The Church a Witness for P od . 


3: 


The Church Defined 
The Church Within the Church . 


4. The Enlarging Social Mission of the Church . 


Ii; THE PROBLEM OF CHURCH UNITY 


re, 
2. The Good and the Evil of Religious Denomination- 


3. Christian Unity a Prerequisite of Church Unity 


4. 


III: THE CHURCH’S AGENCIES FOR LEADING MEN TO GOD 
‘ie 
2. 
3- 
4. 


#5: 


The Significance of a Divided C Pai 
alism 


The Primary Credential of a True Church 
The True Goal of Christian Catholicity 


The Christian Mimstry 
The Christian School 

The Sunday School 
Christian Literature 

The Need for Stirred S ouls 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 


THROUGH THE’ CREEDSeTO:.GOD 


I: THE VALUE OF CREEDS 


ie. 
2. The Mutable and the Permanen loyeanis mn the 


II: THE HISTORIC CREEDS—-ARE THEY HELPS OR HINDRANCES 


1 
2, 
3: 
4. 


The Reason for one 


Christian Faith Distinguished . 


TO FAITH IN OUR DAY? 


The Apostles’ Creed 

The Athanasian Creed... 

The Westminster C onfession of Faith 
The Thirty-Nine Articles : 


xix 
PAGE 


407 
410 


xx CONTENTS 


III : NEED FOR NEW CREDAL STATEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH 


1. New Bottles for the New Wine 
2. Old and New Ideas of Creeds 


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 


THROUGH DOUBT TO FAITH 


I: THE RELATION OF FAITH TO REASON AND RELIGION . 


1. The Office of Doubt in Religion 
2. Dishonest Doubt 
3. When No Doubt Means No Faith 


II: SOME TYPES OF HONEST DOUBT . 


Doubt Due to Temperament 

Doubt Due to Trying Conditions and Experiences 

Scepticism in Developing Youth Not an Abnormal 
Experience : ; ; : : : 

The Agnosticism of Faith : 

When Scepticism Invades the Ministry : 


Ath pe OS ESE 


III; THE REINFORCEMENT OF FAITH . : 
1. The Effects of Christianity in the World : 
2. The Cause and Cure of Doubt . . 
3. The Heroism and Victory of Faith . 


CHAPTER NINETEEN 


THROUGH EXPERIENCE TO GOD 


I: THE NATURE AND NEED OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE . 
1. Experience Man’s Best Teacher . 
2. The Bible and Christian Theology | as Related to 
Experience 
3. God’s Revelation of Himself in and Through Ex- 
perience 
4. The Dark Pathway of Sin—Forces That Drive 
Rather Than Draw Men to God. . 
. Religious Experience as Related to Prayer 


qn 


477 


477 
480 
482 


484 
484 
485 


487 
489 
490 


492 
492 
493 
495 


503 
504 


506 
508 


510 
512 


CONTENTS 


II; GOD IN THE EXPERIENCE OF MEN ° ° ° e 


See Nas 


The Unknown God 

God Concewwed of as an Enemy 

God Obevyed as a Task-Master 

God Found as a Friend 

God Lovedasa Father. . 

Making God Loveable in Human , Life 


III: CHRIST IN THE EXPERIENCE OF MEN . 


I. 


ies 


3) 
4. 


Christ Both the Creator and the Creature ie Chris: 
tian Experience . ’ ’ 

Christian Experience the Essence of Christianity 

Christ Alone Essential to Christian Experience 

The Christ of History and Experience 


IV; THE RESULTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE . 


Ys 


ee 


THROUGH SUFFERING AND DEATH TO GOD 


The God of Nature and the God of Grace are Ones m 
Experience ’ 

Religious Experience a - Solvent of Religious Per- 
plexities and the Bond of Umty : 


CHAPTER TWENTY 


I: THE DIVINE SIGNIFICANCE OF SUFFERING . 


ONS ae Na 


Physical and Moral Evil Distinguished 

Moral Evil as Related to God and Human Free Will 

Physical Evil as Related to God—the Educative 
and Moral Value of Suffering . 

The “Acts of God” Misinterpreted 

Good and Evil as inter Bees a Optimism and 
Pessimism 

Suffering and Song 


II: THE DIVINE SIGNIFICANCE OF DEATH . 


1; 
2. 


3. 


Death as a Revealer of God and I Mperait 

The Why of Physical Death—Its Moral and Edu- 
caiwe Value). 

Death the Removal of Physical Limitations to Man’s 
Spiritual Activities 


4. God, Death and Immortality as Interpreted by the 


Poets 


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523 


526 
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545 
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548 
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aes 


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Xxll CONTENTS 


5. The Confidence and Sunny ree aed oe Christ Con- 
cerning the Future . 566 


PAGE 


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INDEX 


CHAPTER ONE 


INTRODUCTION 
A KNOWLEDGE OF GOD MAN’S GREATEST NEED 


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THE PATHS THAT LEAD 
TO GOD 


CHAPTER ONE 


INTRODUCTION 


A KNOWLEDGE OF GOD MAN’S GREATEST NEED 


There is nothing more needed in the world to-day, or in 
any day, than for men to have a deep conviction of the exist- 
ence of a living God. Some objects of knowledge are possible 
only to the few—to the wise and learned. A knowledge of 
God is possible to all men. A true conception of God is fore- 
most in importance among all the objects of human knowledge 
that is possible to all men. Until a man orients himself rightly 
with reference to God, it is impossible for him to give that 
direction to his life which can alone insure his reaching that 
goal which is the only aim and end that can satisfy the soul 
of a rational and immortal being. There is no preparation 
for large and efficient life-service that is so primary and funda- 
mental as that awakening and inspiration which results from 
a vision of God and an experience of his presence and power 
in one’s life. The Christian worker above all men is de- 
pendent upon his knowledge of God and a right relationship 
to him for that spiritual equipment and guidance without which 
there can be no real success in Christian service and no real 
happiness in Christian experience. It was the revelation and 
vision of God which Moses received at the burning bush in 
the Arabian desert that was not only the beginning of his life 


of service, but it was in the truest sense his enduement with 
25 


26 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


the knowledge and power that enabled him to found and or- 
ganise the greatest nation in moral achievement in the ancient 
world. The vision which Paul received of his divine Lord 
was in like manner the turning point in his career and the 
beginning of his life of unequalled service in spreading the 
Christian religion throughout the world. 


I 
MAN’S SEARCH FOR GOD 


Not only is it true that a knowledge of God is man’s first 
and greatest need, but it is also true that men are at all times 
and everywhere seeking God. The deep-thinking philosopher 
and the unthinking peasant travel along different roads in their 
search for God, but both alike are seeking Him who alone 
can explain their problems and meet their respective needs. 
Whether men are conscious of it or not, and whether they 
acknowledge it to themselves or not, they are all, with varying 
degrees of intelligence and sincerity, seeking God. Many of 
these seekers after God need guidance and counsel that they 
may not miss the way. There are many misleading guide- 
posts and sign-boards along the way, saying, “Lo, God is 
here,’ or “Lo, God is there’; but, following them, men find 
him not. There are no paths that human beings tread that 
need to be made plain and kept open so truly as the paths 
that lead to God. He who would help men to find God must 
interpret him in terms of thought and speech adapted to the 
intellectual and religious conditions and states of mind charac- 
teristic of the age. In meeting these needs in any age the 
religious perplexities and obstacles to faith incident to that 
age have to be considered. Hence books on Theism and the 
Philosophy of Religion, on Apologetics and the Evidences of 
Christianity, must be written afresh for each generation. For 
the world to be content from generation to generation with 
one and the same text book on Theism or Apologetics would 
indicate that it was intellectually static and spiritually stagnant. 
For a book, even a good book, to become obsolete is often a 
sign and proof of healthful religious activity and progress. 


INTRODUCTION 27 


1. The Causes and Occasions for Present-Day Doubts and 
Inquiries Concerning God 


Each new generation has its own causes and occasions for 
fresh inquiry concerning the nature and character of God— 
inquiries which, however indicative they may be on the surface 
of doubt, are more deeply indicative of faith in the personality 
and power and in the wisdom and goodness of the Divine Be- 
ing who created, sustains and governs the universe. There 
are some forms of doubt and unrest in religion that are signs 
of healthful thought and progress, and others that are indi- 
cations of unhealthful and perilous tendencies in the moral 
and religious life of men and nations. It is important to dis- 
tinguish the one from the other. The former may be safely 
let alone; the latter needs to be carefully considered as to its 
causes and its cure. 

Much of the religious unrest and doubt of our day is 
expressing itself in questions that bear on the existence and 
character of God to an extent which, some think, has rarely 
if ever been equalled before in the history of human thought. 
Some of the causes for these questions about God are manifest 
and easily named. Four or five of these need only to be 
named in order to be recognised at once as provoking causes 
of doubt and inquiry in our day. 

First and most immediate in our day is the recent great 
World War and the ills that have followed it, involving the 
sufferings not of the guilty alone, but even more of innocent 
people to such an extent and to a degree so appalling as to 
cause men to ask how God could be possessed of infinite power, 
infinite knowledge and infinite goodness and allow such wrongs 
and sufferings to take place. If he could prevent so great an 
evil, but would not, they have asked—repeating the age-old 
question raised in the book of Job—how can we regard him 
as infinitely good? If he would have prevented it, but could 
not, can we regard him as infinite in power? If God is infinite 
both in power and in goodness, do not such unspeakable evils 
as this World War and the suffering of innocent men, women 
and children involved in it, prove that things like these are 


28 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


outside the sphere of his operation and control? Who then, 
or what, is God anyway? And where? Thus men have been 
led to question his goodness, his power and his wisdom, and 
even his existence. Is there no answer to such questions? 

A second subtle cause of unrest has been at work. Men’s 
ideas and ideals of governments and their rulers have changed 
from that of an arbitrary, imperial and absolute monarchy 
where the ruler’s will was the one and only law, from which 
there was no appeal, to a commonwealth and government of 
and over free beings whose interests are so identified with 
those of their ruler as to make him the embodiment of a dem- 
ocratic ideal of lordship, which means, or should mean, that 
love and beneficence control the will and direct the power of 
the ruler. The God of traditional Calvinistic theology with 
his sovereign and absolute will deciding the destiny of men 
before they are born, and the course of their lives after they 
are born, no longer satisfies the minds and consciences of mod- 
ern thinking men who demand that God’s sovereignty shall 
be interpreted in terms of a divine and social democracy which 
they believe is the divine ideal of government for God as well 
as for earthly rulers and governments. This means that God 
is the Ruler of free beings who may defy as well as obey, his 
will; and his government of men and nations involves over- 
ruling the rebellious as well as ruling the righteous and obe- 
dient. 

Again, the rise of the doctrine of evolution and its accept- 
ance in the scientific world has been so pronounced and wide- 
spread as to create not only unrest but alarm on the part of 
those who have believed that creation was an instantaneous 
act of God accomplished in six days; and these disturbed 
believers have interpreted the doctrine of evolution as getting 
rid of God in the realm of nature and as deifying and en- 
throning natural law and physical force. 

Coupled with this cause, and more or less identified with 
it, is the fact that ours is pre-eminently an age of science, and 
science presupposes and is based on faith in the absolute regu- 
larity and uniformity of the operation of nature’s laws; and so 
deeply does this conviction as to natural law possess the mod- 


INTRODUCTION 29 


ern mind that there is a growing tendency to call in question 
the accuracy of any statements as to the past which repre- 
sent certain events as having been brought about by a divine 
interruption of nature’s laws. There is therefore a manifest 
and outspoken tendency not only to retire miracles from the 
foreground to the background of modern Apologetics, but to 
drop them entirely as an argument unconvincing to the modern 
scientific mind. This appears to many as being tantamount to 
eliminating everything supernatural from the Christian re- 
ligion. 

In like manner, modern scholars by reinterpreting the Bible 
in keeping with the principles of literary and historical criti- 
cism applied to all other types and realms of ancient literature, 
have made it to appear that the human element in the Scrip- 
tures is a source of possible error in the sacred record and 
interpretation of events and facts, some of which affect more 
or less seriously the character of God, especially the God of 
the Old Testament. In so doing the modern scholars have 
seemed to believers in the traditional doctrine of Biblical in- 
spiration and inerrancy to take God out of the Bible, as evo- 
lutionists have seemed to them to take him out of nature as its 
Creator and Preserver. 

Yet a fifth cause for theological unrest and for questions 
about God should be mentioned. A change has come about 
in men’s attitude towards the heathen religions of the world. 
Most of the traditional types of theology prevalent in the 
past have interpreted these religions as false, as more satanic 
than divine in their origin and form of manifestation, and 
have regarded the heathen, because of these false religions, as 
children of the devil and as such necessarily without God and 
without hope in the world. The modern science of Compara- 
tive Religions has, on the contrary, more and more interpreted 
these religions as a proof of men’s search for God and as an 
honest and sincere expression of their faith in God, regarding 
them as something inadequate, erroneous and unsatisfying 
rather than as something false, sinful and satanic in origin 
and form. Many have found it difficult and confusing to 
adjust this new attitude towards the hedthen religions of the 


30 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


world to the fact that our conception of God and our Chris- 
tian faith constitute the one and only true and saving religion 
in the world. 


Now it may be that these five things which I have mentioned 
—the unspeakable atrocities of the World War, the incoming 
of modern democratic ideals of government and sovereignty, 
the scientific doctrine of evolution, the modern scholar’s view 
of the human element in the Bible as the source of possible 
error, and the new science of Comparative Religions—should 
not, and would not if properly interpreted, raise doubts as 
to the existence or the beneficent activity of God, or in any 
way dethrone him or impeach his character as an absolutely 
perfect Being. But, as a matter of fact, it is quite certain 
that all five of the facts named have caused, and are causing, 
questions about God’s existence and character that need to be 
answered. Nor do these by any means exhaust the causes 
of religious unrest and of the inquiries concerning God and 
his Providence that are characteristic of our day. 

And it may turn out that the only satisfactory answer to 
these questions will involve or result in a reinterpretation of 
God in terms of modern thought and faith and in a restate- 
ment of the Christian doctrine of God in different language 
from that found in the historic creeds of Christendom. If so, 
what shall the reinterpretation be? Where will the new em- 
phasis be placed? 

But, after all, these inquiries about God, even though they 
may seem to be critical of the Church and her creeds, and to 
imply doubts as to the very existence of an omnipotent, omni- 
present and omniscient Being of infinite goodness, are a proof 
of the prevalent, widespread and undying interest of men in 
religion. Men are “incurably religious,” and they cannot rest 
without a satisfying conception of God. To doubt at the 
right time and the right place and to give expression in the 
right manner to this doubt may be the best cure for doubt 
and the best evidence of an irrepressible faith. Honest doubt 
concerning God and matters of religion may save faith from 
superstition and lead to a faith that is at once intelligent, sane 


INTRODUCTION 31 


and satisfying, and mark a forward movement in the progress 
of religious thought and Christian faith. 


2. Need for Reinterpreting God and Restating the Grounds 
of Theistic and Christian Faith in our Day 


A recent thoughtful and illuminating volume by Bishop 
Charles Gore of Oxford, England, titled “Belief in God,” has 
attracted wide attention among scholars and theologians by its 
able discussion of the fundamentals of Theistic faith. He 
considers especially the question as to how our conception 
and interpretation of God have been affected by the results 
of modern scientific research and biblical scholarship. A sec- 
ond volume, titled “Belief in Christ,’’ does for God incarnate, 
the divine-human Person of Christian faith, what the first 
volume undertook to do for faith in God. The first chapter 
in Bishop Gore’s “Belief in God”’ is titled “The Breakdown 
of Tradition” and begins with this sentence: “The world in 
_ which we live to-day can only be described as chaotic in the 
matter of religious beliefs.”’ 

“Tf I read our times aright,” says Sir Henry Jones, in be- 
ginning his lectures on the Gifford Foundation at the Uni- 
versity of Glasgow, Scotland, “there are thousands of thought- 
ful men in this country whose interest in religion is sincere, 
but who can neither accept the ordinary teaching of the Church 
nor subject themselves to its dogmatic ways. I would fain 
demonstrate to these men, both by example and precept, that 
the enquiry which makes the fullest use of the severe intel- 
lectual methods, supports those beliefs upon which a religion 
worth having rests. Let man seek God by the way of pure 
reason and he will find him.” The Church is here to stay; 
but its “dogmatic ways’”—and this phrase, interpreted etymo- 
logically, simply means its “ways of teaching fundamental 
truth’’—are not only subject to change, but should be changed 
from time to time if they are to be made most effective in 
each succeeding generation. 

Each generation has its own special religious needs; but the 
need for a fresh study of God, for a new realisation of his 
presence and power, and a new interpretation of him in terms 


39 


32 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


of the living thought of the faith of the day, is an ever- 
present need of every generation of men. Some things are 
subjects of occasional thought. God is the one supreme sub-. 
ject that is always the foremost object of thought among 
men. As rational beings we cannot think and reason without 
taking into our thought and into our reasoning Him in whom 
we live and move and have our being. 

The cure of theological and religious unrest that may char- 
acterise our own or any other age can only come through 
serious and honest thinking, with open, truth-seeking minds 
and truth-loving hearts bent on not only finding out who God 
is and where he is, but on getting acquainted with him and 
knowing him,—bent on knowing his will not for the purpose 
of idly speculating about it, and correcting the opinions of 
others, but for the purpose of doing that will in and through 
self-forgetful and sacrificial service for others. These are 
the pilgrims for whose guidance we are making inquiries con- 
cerning ‘‘the paths that lead to God.” 


II 


A‘ SURVEY OF THE PATHS THAD LEAD SLORE Oe 


1. The Spiritual Interpretation and Use of Nature 


The first path that we shall take we designate “Through 
Nature to God.” To reason from nature, physical nature, up 
to nature’s God is to follow a stream of thought that always 
empties itself into that boundless ocean whose depths no man 
can fathom. Science is the careful and comprehensive study 
of nature in all its phases in order to discover and register 
its laws; and when it is recognised that all laws are but the 
methods and means by and through which some personal will 
acts, every devout and observant student of science will find 
that to study science is to travel through nature to a God . 
whose personal power can alone explain the laws of nature. 
Whether we study nature extensively or intensively, whether 
we look through the telescope at the unnumbered worlds of 
light that constitute our universe, or through the microscope 


INTRODUCTION 33 


at the elementary substances and ingredients that enter into 
mineral, chemical and biological forms of existence that are 
called atoms and electrons, we are driven alike along each and 
every one of these highways and byways of thought to the 
irresistible conclusion that Nature as we know it is inexplicable 
without a personal God. 

One of John Fiske’s famous volumes bears the title 
“Through Nature to God.” It is chiefly interesting in that 
it shows how profoundly convinced an ardent evolutionist and 
student of science can be that nature rightly interpreted fur- 
nishes irresistible and overwhelming proof that there is a God, 
which proof he considers confirmed in and through human 
nature by “the everlasting reality of religion.” 


2. Man’s Nature a Revelation of God 


From physical nature we pass to another pathway which 
we may designate as “Through Man to God.’ However val- 
able may be the material which physical nature furnishes 
for the study of the nature and attributes of the Divine Be- 
ing, human nature furnishes material yet more valuable and 
trustworthy. Seeing that man was made in the image of 
God, and continues to bear his image, to reason from man’s 
nature back to God, and up to God, should prove a sure and 
satisfying pathway to a knowledge of the Creator. This will 
suggest various subsidiary lines of approach that might bear 
designations such as “Through psychology to God,” “Through 
conscience to God,’ “Through philosophy to God,’ which 
phrases at once suggest man’s intellectual, emotional and voli- 
tional nature, and point to the fact that he is possessed of a 
conscience and of moral free agency. Human nature, there- 
fore, as well as, and even more than, physical nature, when 
carefully studied furnishes to the mind of man arguments 
which, when logically combined, not only make irresistible the 
conclusion that there is a ‘God, but prove much as to the essen- 
tial character of the Divine Being. 

As the mind of man thinks, as the heart feels and loves, 
as the will chooses among different alternatives and as by its 
volitions a man becomes a conscious cause of certain definite 


34 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


and desired effects, so, from these subjective psychological 
facts and experiences, he infers, and cannot escape the convic- 
tion, that, back of and over and above himself and all nature, . 
there must be a supreme Being possessed of these functions 
and powers without which nature and finite personality would 
be inexplicable. And it is not easy to see how man could 
carry in his wonderfully complex nature a stronger and more 
convincing proof that the Creator and Governor of the world 
must be a moral Being than is furnished by the universal 
presence in man of a conscience, a moral consciousness, a 
sense of right and wrong and responsibility that proclaims 
the existence of a moral law and moral government which 
zbsolutely require a moral God to explain them. 

John Locke, the well-known English philosopher, in his 
famous “Essay concerning the Human Understanding,” gives 
expression to a profound conviction in these words: “I pre- 
sume I may say that we more certainly know that there is a 
God than that there is anything else without us.’ We do 
not wonder therefore to find that this eminent philosopher 
followed this volume with another titled, ‘““The Reasonable- 
ness of Christianity.” 

Some intuitive philosophers contend that the idea of God 
is innate, that it is born with us and in us, that it is an in- 
tuitive truth and involved in our very consciousness, and is 
therefore a condition of thought and not something demand- 
ing a process of reason and to be reached only as a conclusion. 
The knowledge of God, say they, is an instinct of the soul; 
and while it may be confirmed by reason, it does not need 
reason to account for its existence. If this be true, then 
every man has in his own self-consciousness the God whom 
he seeks, and all his studies of nature and human nature will 
simply mean an increase and enlargement of his knowledge 
of One whom he already knows in part. 

When Helen Keller, deaf, dumb and blind from early child- 
hood, had been so educated that others were able to communi- 
cate with her, and find out her thoughts, and convey thoughts 
to her, they arranged it so that Phillips Brooks should first 
talk to her concerning God. And when he told her concern- 


INTRODUCTION 35 


ing the Creator and Heavenly Father she burst into the utmost 
rapture that she was capable of manifesting and responded 
through her interpreter that she had long had thoughts about 
him and had so much wanted some one to talk to her about 
him. Possibly no instance could be taken from actual human 
life more favourable to the view that the idea of God is in- 
nate than this of Helen Keller, who, it was discovered, had 
had a knowledge of God and an experience with him, long 
before any communication concerning him had come to her 
from the outside world. 

“Through Philosophy to God” is thus a phrase that points 
to a method of approaching the infinite and eternal Person 
through a process of thought and reason that sustains the 
same relation to the human mind and its laws that science 
sustains to physical nature and its laws. Science has to deal 
with the facts and phenomena of nature; philosophy and 
metaphysics deal with the fundamental ideas of the mind and 
_the causes of things, with the underlying but invisible prin- 
ciples at the foundation of things in so far as they are objects 
of thought and knowledge. But if theism is true the funda- 
mental and ultimate fact of all being is God. All theistic 
philosophy is theology in that it finds the explanation of all 
things, the reason why they are what they are, in God. 

To study God’s revelation of himself in the history of the 
human race ought to be a pathway to God as truly as that 
which leads through nature and science. The fact that free 
agents so often, whether acting separately as individuals or 
collectively in groups and as nations, oppose and thwart the 
purposes of God concerning them, makes it more difficult to 
trace the footprints of the Governor of men in history than 
it is to trace the footprints of the Creator in physical nature. 
And yet, rightly interpreted, history is a revelation of God’s 
nature and of his providential government of men. The 
philosophy of the Christian Religion is a study not only of the 
dominant and all pervasive influence of religion in history, but 
to some extent of the moral philosophy of history, of the hand 
of God, as seen in the life of men and nations, especially as 
influenced by their religions and their conceptions of God. 


36 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


3. God's Best Revealer—the Divine-Human Christ 


But there is a plainer and surer path to God than either 
physical nature or human nature—it is through Him who 
alone of all earthly beings possessed not only a complete 
human nature, but a divine-human nature. “Through Christ 
to God” will, therefore, furnish our best approach to an un- 
derstanding and knowledge of the nature and attributes of 
God. The first path (nature) will lead us to God the Crea- 
tor; the second (human nature) will lead us to discover God 
not only as Creator, but as the moral Governor of those free 
moral beings whom he created in his own image. This third 
path, the divine-human Christ, will bring us to a knowledge 
of God as not only a Creator and Governor, but as our loving 
heavenly Father—and if perchance one has forfeited through 
wilful and persistent sin his right to be called a child of 
God, Christ reveals himself as one who can restore the prodigal 
son to his Father’s household. If we start upon this path 
with Christ, looking upon Him as a mere man, as did the 
disciples of old, before we have reached the end of the journey 
our fellowship with him will convince us that he was more 
than a man—that he who called himself the Son of Man was 
really the Son of God even more truly than he was the Son 
of Man. 

While God could and did reveal something of himself in 
and through physical nature, and still more of himself in and 
through human nature, it was only when he had a divine- 
human Nature in whom and through whom to reveal himself 
that his revelation could be adequate and complete. “He that 
hath seen me hath seen the Father,” said Christ, and this he 
said, not so much to tell us that he himself was like God as 
that God the Father was like himself, the Son. The incarnate 
Christ revealed God not only in the words he spoke concern- 
ing him, and in the God-like deeds with which his life was 
crowded and crowned, but, being the divine Son and the 
express image of the Father, in his person also he revealed 
and glorified him. It is impossible to exaggerate, or even 


INTRODUCTION 37 


adequately to express, the value of the revelation of God which 
the incarnate divine-human Christ brought to men. 

But we cannot think of God in Christ as the Saviour with- 
out thinking of man as a sinner. “Through Sin to God’ 
seems on first thought to be an expression that involves a con- 
tradiction, an ethical impossibility ; and yet rightly interpreted 
the phrase indicates that man may be driven to God as well 
as drawn to him. The deep and awful helplessness and mis- 
ery of the human soul in the experience of sin and guilt com- 
pel the sinner, through very anguish and wretchedness of 
spirit, to realise the need of a ‘God who can forgive and blot 
out sin and deliver him from its awful bondage. ‘Who can 
forgive sins but God only?’ A blessed day for the sinner 
is it when he is driven to exclaim and cry out in his anguish 
of soul, “Oh, wretched man that J am! who shall deliver me 
from this body of death?’ The best thing that sin can do 
for a man is to make him feel the need of a divine Saviour 
from sin, and thus drive him to God. 


4. The Divine-Human Book 


“Through the Bible to God” is perhaps the most familiar 
of all the paths that lead to the divine Being; and yet if the 
Bible be not read thoughtfully and interpreted truly, it may, 
taken in its entirety, lead to confused and contradictory ideas 
of God. Read with discrimination and interpreted as a pro- 
gressive revelation of God extending over hundreds or even 
thousands of years, and completed only in and by Christ, who 
was the one and only absolutely perfect revealer of God, it 
becomes the best of all guide-books for pilgrims who are 
in search of God. It has long been common to designate this 
path to God as that of divine revelation in contrast to that 
of nature and human reason—the supernatural as distinct 
from the natural and human. As Christ is a divine-human 
person, so may we regard the Bible as a divine-human book 
in a sense that is not true of any other book in the literature 
of the world. No interpretation of the Bible can be true to 
the facts which fails to recognise both the human and the 


38 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


divine elements that enter into its composition. The writers 
are as genuinely human as any writers in all literature; and 
to rob them of their human limitations and imperfections is ~ 
not to add to, but to detract from, the value of their writings; 
and yet there is a something in their writings, an element of 
moral and spiritual truth in their messages, that is so much 
above what is found in other religious writings, that it has 
justified the claim that the writers of this most remarkable 
and influential of all books were divinely inspired. 

This divine-human book, moreover, contains a record of 
certain events which are so far above and beyond anything 
which nature or man, as we know them, can bring about that 
they are called miracles or supernatural events; and these 
have to be most carefully studied and interpreted if they are 
to be helps and not hindrances to faith in our day. There 
are also certain predictions of future events, especially con- 
cerning the coming in the fulness of time of one who is 
called the Messiah, which are so far beyond the ordinary 
powers of the human mind to foresee and foretell that they 
have been interpreted as divine revelations possible only to 
omniscience. The most outstanding characteristic of the He- 
brew Scriptures is its monotheistic conception and definition 
of God in terms of spirituality, personality, unity and holiness, 
in marked contrast with the materialistic, pantheistic, and 
polytheistic conceptions of God found in other ancient re- 
ligions; while the revelation of God in terms of Fatherhood 
and love is, in like manner, the most notable contribution 
made by the New Testament to the religious thought and life 
of mankind. 

The books of the Old Testament have been well designated 
as “the divine library.”’ The first book in this “Library” be- 
gins with the words “In the beginning God created the heavens 
and the earth.’ Among the last, and possibly the very last, 
of all the inspired books in date of composition is St. John’s 
Gospel, and it begins with a sentence no less majestic and 
noble than the first words in Genesis: ‘In the beginning was 
the Word; and the Word was with God, and the Word was 


INTRODUCTION 39 


God.” The Bible begins, continues and ends with God as does 
no other book in all literature. 


5. The Church a Witness for God 


The Church is composed of those who know God in and 
through a personal experience and are organised to bring those 
who know him not into that saving knowledge which they en- 
joy. It is only in and through experience that any one can 
attain unto a satisfactory knowledge of God. One may get an 
intellectual conception of God from others, and learn some- 
thing about God from creeds and from books of theology; 
he may have pointed out to him all these pathways to God 
that we have noted, and which other men have travelled and 
are still travelling; but not until he himself has a vitalising 
experience with God will he really know him. To be told that 
God hears and answers prayer, that he forgives the sin of 
every truly penitent soul that humbly seeks pardon, that he 
can break the bondage of sinful habit and remove the sense 
of guilt from the conscience of contrite sinners who turn 
from their wicked ways; that he can put a new love in one’s 
heart and a new song in one’s mouth—one may hear and 
assent to all this, and still be a stranger to God. But let him 
put all these matters to the test of experience, and find out 
for himself that God is a prayer-hearing and prayer-answering 
God; let him know in his own heart the joy of sins forgiven 
and feel the expulsive power of a new and divine affection— 
and from that moment he will know God, and find him 
wherever he goes, and every path he travels will become to 
him a pathway to God—indeed God will reveal himself and 
be in close communion with him all along the way and not 
simply at the end of his pilgrimage. This does not mean 
that everything will be from this time on exactly as he would 
have it—that trials and tribulations will be at an end in his 
life—far from it. But it does mean that he will have found 
in the grace of God and in the power and presence of the 
Holy Spirit that which will not only sustain in every trial, but 
even turn his very trials into spiritual blessings and make his 


40 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


life more effective in service to others. Of all the proofs that 
there is a God, the crowning evidence is that of personal ex- — 
perience. 

Not, then, until men have an experience of God can there be 
a Church, a divine-human institution composed of those who 
know God, an organised body of true believers whose one great 
and divine mission is to lead men to God. Only those who 
know God by experience are prepared to seek and find those 
who know him not, and lead them into a saving knowledge 
of him. As in the study of the divine-human Person and 
of the divine-human Book, so in the study of the divine- 
human Institution as a path that leads to God, it is all im- 
portant for us to recognise both the divine and the human 
elements that enter into it. After making all due allowance 
for its errors and shortcomings, no one can deny that the 
Church is the greatest agency in the world for guiding men 
to a saving knowledge of God. It is the mission of the 
Church, working as a corporate body and in its individual 
members, to use all possible means and methods of leading a 
lost world to God. To be lost is to be away from God; to 
find God and to know him aright is the goal of human 
thought and the end of life. Heaven is, whatever else it may 
or may not be, the place where we shall know God even as 
we are known by him. To help men find and know God here 
on earth, and to find and know him in the final and more 
perfect fellowship of heaven—that is the great mission of the 
Church militant until it becomes the Church triumphant. 


6. The Revelation of God Through Suffering and Death 


It is only through suffering that some men are ever brought 
to a sense of their need of God, and when we recall that those 
who already know God are brought to a fuller and deeper 
knowledge of him oftener perhaps through suffering of one 
kind and another than through any other agency, we recog- 
nise in the discipline of suffering an instrument which divine 
grace transforms into a beneficent pathway to God. And when 
suffering has done its worst, when one comes to tread the 
winepress alone, or when the cup of sorrow is being drunk 


INTRODUCTION 41 


and drained to its very dregs as one sees a life that he loves 
better than his own go out in the darkness of death, then 
one’s first thought may be, and indeed often is with the light- 
minded and light-hearted, “There is no God—there can be no 
God—or such suffering and sorrow could never be.” But, on 
second thought, more deep-minded and deep-hearted, the suf- 
fering soul finds that God in the deeps of sorrow whom he 
never cared to find on the surface of a self-centred life. 

When a man buries his loved one there comes to him not 
only new and deeper thoughts about a future life and a pro- 
founder realisation of the necessity of it in order to satisfy 
the deepest desires of the soul, but he realises that there can 
be no future and eternal life unless there be a God—and unless 
there be suffering and death. And when one approaches death 
himself, his heart cries out for a living God. No argument 
for a God is more potent than that which comes from a new- 
made grave. Then it is that He who alone brings life and 
immortality to light is welcomed as an abiding guest. It is 
through death that we learn of deathlessness; and it is only 
in and through death that we can enter into that life where 
alone it is possible for God fully to reveal himself to those 
who bear his image. 


7. The Use of Reason in Finding God 


Reason arrays all these facts into arguments and transforms 
them into a faith that hath foundations. It is only as intelli- 
gent and rational beings that we can travel along these path- 
ways of thought that spread out before us in our search for 
God. “Through Reason to God” is a phrase which indicates 
that a satisfactory knowledge of God may be arrived at 
through a process of reason; that the world and human life 
abound in facts and experiences which furnish to the mind of 
man the arguments which, when logically combined, not only 
make irresistible the conclusion that there is a God, but prove 
much as to the essential character of the Divine Being whose 
existence is thus proved. It is probably true that few if any 
intelligent human beings have ever lived who did not find them- 
selves at times driven by reason to faith in the existence of a 


42 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Divine Being—times when the conviction came to them and 
pressed itself upon them that the denial of a personal Creator 
and Ruler of the universe is more unreasonable than the as- — 
sumption of such a Being. All these paths that we are to 
travel are paths of reason, paths of thought involving rational 
processes and leading to rational conclusions. We may say, 
and say truly, that most men come “through the heart to 
God” —through the feelings, through love, through a longing 
for companionship with the Infinite, and All-loving—and this 
may seem to be an approach to God through a pathway quite 
different from that of reason; but the moment we think about 
it and construct it into an argument, it becomes a rational 
process and takes its place in theology and philosophy. 


With this general survey of the paths that we are to travel 
we pause to consider more definitely, before entering upon 
our pilgrimage along these great highways of truth, who it 
is that we are seeking to find and to know. There are gods 
many and lords many. Surely there is some One among them 
all, if we can only find him, in whom dwelleth all the fulness 
of the Godhead bodily. To know him aright will secure 
personal and spiritual fellowship with him in a life that is 
eternal. We inquire, therefore, concerning God—Who is he? 
What is he? Where is he? 


CHAPTER Two 


THES GOD WE SBEK 
WHO IS HE? WHAT IS HE? WHERE IS HE? 





Cuapter Two 


THE GOD WE SEEK 


WHO IS HE? WHAT IS HE? WHERE IS HE? 


The moral character and influence of men and nations may 
be determined in no small degree by the answer they give 
to the question, ‘““Who is God?” As a nation’s God is, so is 
that nation. A people’s idea of God and their fidelity or 
infidelity to that idea are not only an index of what they 
have been in the past morally, but it is the greatest and most 
influential single factor in determining what they will become 
morally in the future, and what they will accomplish in the 
way of moral achievement. The history of civilisation and 
the history of religion are vitally related to each other. The 
highest intellectual and moral greatness is impossible to those 
who have low and debasing ideas of God. To believe in and 
worship an immoral and unholy God cannot fail to degrade 
and debase the worshipper. On the other hand, to believe 
in and worship a God of infinite holiness and love is to fill 
the soul of the worshipper with aspirations after the moral 
qualities of the God whom he worships. The same relation 
that exists between a worshipper and his god, applies in the 
main to a nation and its god. Men, religions, churches, na- 
tions, may all be weighed accurately in those moral and spiritual 
scales which register high and low conceptions of God. 

There is no need that we should try to separate the three 
questions that appear above in the title of this chapter; for, in 
answering the question, ““Who is God ?”’, we will be telling what 
he is and what he is not, and in telling who he is and what he 
is, we will be telling where he is and where he is not. 

The answers which men have given to the question as to 
- who and what God is, divide the faiths of men into certain 
great classes or groups designated by certain terms which are 

45 


46 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


familiar to all students of religion, viz., polytheism, dualism, 
monism (of which materialism and pantheism are the most 
notable types), deism, Hebrew monotheism, and Christian » 
Theism. 


I 
ANTI-THEISTIC CONCEPTIONS OF GOD 


Among the many anti-theistic conceptions of God that have 
prevailed among men we shall consider only six in our pres- 
ent discussion. 


1. Polytheism 


A large portion of the human race have been polytheists 
and have believed in many gods. The further back we go 
towards primitive man and the lower we descend in the scale 
of civilisation, the greater is the number of gods found in 
the religious faiths of men. The faith of primitive man and 
the lowest savages, such as those found in the heart of Africa 
and in Australia, is designated as Fetishism, which crude 
faith sees a deity in almost every object of nature and some- 
thing divine in numerous animals, especially in objects and 
animals which are abnormal, uncouth and uncanny in appear- 
ance. The heathen nations with whom the children of Israel 
came in contact at the various stages of their checkered history 
were all polytheists. Abraham was surrounded by polytheists 
in ancient Chaldea, and archzologists in unearthing the long- 
buried records of ancient Babylonia find evidences of a most 
elaborate and highly developed polytheism which gave names 
to deities which were supposed to represent the sun, the moon, 
the sky and many other objects of nature. In Egypt poly- 
theism took the form of deifying and worshipping every kind 
of animal. The heathen tribes originally occupying the land 
of Canaan and immediately surrounding the country after it 
was occupied by the Hebrew nation, were all polytheists and 
idolators worshipping gods made with their own hands. The 
most refined and poetic form of polytheism was that of ancient 
Greece and Rome where there were greater and lesser gods 


THE GOD WE SEEK ANG 


and goddesses, ruled over by Jupiter, the over-lord, whose 
throne was on Mt. Olympus and who had under him, some- 
times to aid and sometimes to hinder him, lesser gods like 
Mars, Neptune, Pluto, Apollo, Minerva, Venus, Juno and 
others whose names have been enshrined in literature and art 
and have become a part of the poetry and mythology of the 
civilised world. 

The fact that the sex idea—father, mother and child—runs 
through all life, naturally suggested to primitive minds its ap- 
plication to Deity. Scientists tell us that even vegetable life 
in bringing forth seed after its kind is subject to this law of 
l:fe—in part at least. The honey bee in bearing the pollen from 
the male to the female flowers makes the fruit possible. Not 
a few of the polytheistic religions of the world have followed 
the suggestion of nature in this regard, and have found the 
central and dominant idea of their religions, and of their 
conception of deity, in this thought of the origin of all life 
in the adaptation of male and female to each other for 
the propagation of life, and have carried the distinction into 
the realm of the Supra-mundane World. But, as applied and 
developed by them, it has always resulted in a debasement of 
religion and in a degrading of deity. The most popular of 
the gods of ancient Egypt were the deities of fertility, Osiris, 
the father-god, and his sister-wife, Isis, who is pictured as a 
mother-goddess nursing a child-god, Horus by name. The 
gods of the Greeks and Romans were male and female gods 
and goddesses whose offspring in turn were divinely begotten 
gods and goddesses. 

“The Baal divinities of pagan Semitic peoples, Babylonians, 
Pheenicians, Canaanites, all have their female companions. 
Sexuality is a radical characteristic of deity as conceived by 
these peoples. That means sensuality introduced into religion, 
sexual prostitution erected into an act of worship, whereby 
Semitic paganism becomes stamped with an exceptional vile- 
ness. What a contrast is here in the idea of God, and what 
diverse fruit it must bear in social life; on one side severe 
purity, on the other revolting, unmentionable vice! Whence 
this vast difference between Israel and peoples to which she 


48 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


is close of kin in blood and language?” * The answer and ex- 
planation can only be found in Jehovah whom the Israelites 
chose to be their God and in the people who were what they 
were because Jehovah chose them to be his people. ts 

“The belief in a feminine element in the Divine was mixed 
up with matters of sex,” says Dr. Gwatkin, “and led to such 
gross excesses that decent religions have always looked on it 
with great and just suspicion. Yet its truth is undeniable for 
those who confess the image of God in man, unless the ‘femi- 
nine’ virtues are either rejected or placed in a lower class.” ” 

Thus, fundamental as is the idea of fatherhood and mother- 
hood in relation to life and its propagation, every attempt 
to interpret deity in terms of sex and sexual relationships 
has in time led to the debasing of deity and the ultimate dis- 
solution of the religion that attempted it. It would seem that 
all the precious truth as to parenthood that can be gotten into 
the conception of deity, and that properly belongs to God, 
has been incorporated into the Christian conception of God, 
and has found expression in the nature and character of the 
heavenly Father, as he has been revealed by Christ. 


2. Dualism 


There have been thoughtful people in all ages of human 
history who, finding it impossible to reconcile the presence and 
power of evil in the world with the existence of a God infinite 
in power and goodness, have found relief in the belief that 
there are two eternal existences, Spirit and Matter, the one 
the source of all that is good, the other the source of all that 
is evil. Sometimes the source of evil in the world has been 
conceived of as an eternal principle of evil in the nature of 
finite existence, or as an evil Spirit co-eternal with another 
Spirit who is the personal source of all good. Dualism has 
found its most notable historic expression in the Zoroastrian 
religion of ancient Persia, though there have been other ex- 
pressions of this faith both in the ancient and in the medieval 
and modern world. 


1A. B. Bruce, “Apologetics,” p, 223. 
2“Knowledge of God,” Vol. I, p. 258. 


THE GOD WE SEEK 49 


The ancient sect of Christians known as Gnostics held a 
dualistic theory of the world. Spirit and matter, good and 
evil, are essentially opposed to each other. The Gnostics 
thought whatever comes in contact with matter shares in its 
contamination; therefore the supreme God cannot, they said, 
be the Creator of the world containing matter that is intrinsi- 
cally evil. The supreme God or First cause is so transcendent 
and utterly remote from all that we know as existing, we 
cannot predicate anything of him (or it) with certainty. A 
series of divine beings called AZons emanate in pairs from the 
First Cause. One of these A“©ons was the Creator (Demiur- 
gos) of the World, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, the 
only God known to the Jews. The material world which he 
creates is in itself by nature evil; and from this evil nothing 
that is in any way material can be free. All physically em- 
bodied spirits suffer from the contaminating evil. Redemp- 
tion consists in the liberation of finite spirits, sparks of Deity, 

which had become entangled in the meshes of matter and man. 
This was accomplished by Christ, another Aon from the 
great First Cause, who came largely to undo the evil which 
the Creator did in connecting spirits with material bodies.’ 
Christ’s physical nature, they said, was not real; it was docetic; 
it was a phantasm, an appearance only, not real flesh and blood 
such as belongs to normal human beings. 


3. Materialism 


Among the anti-theistic answers that’are given to the ques- 
tion “What is God,” that which in our day demands most seri- 
ous consideration is materialistic monism, seeing that much 
of the scientific thought of modern times is materialistic. The 
materialist believes that matter is eternal and is eternally en- 
dowed with certain properties which account for all things in 
existence. What we call life and mind and spirit are but a 
subtle and inscrutable manifestation of matter. All higher 
forms of existence have come by evolution from lower forms. 
Whatever is evolved from matter must have been involved 


1 See the article on “Gnosticism,” in the New International Encyclo- 
pedia. 


50 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


in matter from the beginning. The properties of matter are 
inseparable from matter. Nevertheless, if considered in them- 
selves alone, they constitute what may be called energy or . 
force. Matter is indestructible and energy is indestructible. 
They had no beginning; they can have no end. They can un- 
dergo change almost without limit, but they can be neither 
created nor annihilated. Energy may take the form of any 
one of an indefinite number of forces; and these forces may 
be correlated into each other. Heat, motion, light, are but 
different forms of the one same force. The same is true of 
life, consciousness, feeling, thought. 

The materialist, therefore, says there is no God; or if there 
be a God, then Energy, that infinite, inscrutable Force that 
pervades the universe and is inseparable from matter, is the 
one and only thing that can properly be called God. The 
“gods” of the world are all creations of the imagination, ac- 
cording to the materialist. Instead of saying that in the 
beginning God created man, it would be more in accord with 
the facts to say that in the beginning man created God—in the 
beginning, after nature evolved man, he began creating a God, 
and has been adding to and improving upon that first creation 
ever since. If anything is worthy to be called God, it is that 
which is uncreated and eternal and the source of all things 
in existence; and that one uncreated and eternal something 
is Matter. The nearest approach materialists make to recog- 
nising a God is to spell Matter and Energy and Force with 
capital letters. “A philosophy,” says Dr. Newman Smyth, 
“which finds itself compelled to spell some common nouns with 
capitals in order that it may worship them, can hardly deny 
the moral necessity of some religion.” 


wy Pantheism 


While the materialist says there is no God and no such 
thing as spirit regarded as an entity separate and distinct from 
matter,—that matter is everything and everything is matter— 
the pantheist says that there is nothing in the universe but. 
God, that 'God is everything and everything is God. Panthe- 
ism teaches that matter and all visible forms of creaturely ex- 


THE GOD WE SEEK 51 


istence are nothing but the visible existence form of God— 
das habendige kleid, the living garment of God, as Goethe, the 
great poet of pantheism, called it, following Spinoza, the great 
philosopher of pantheism. But ‘God, according to pantheism, 
is not a person, not a He, but an infinite It, devoid of con- 
sciousness, a God who comes to consciousness only in finite 
existences. ‘The infinite and eternal Something that abides in 
the universe is thus to be conceived of not as matter, but as 
spirit; and instead of spirit being a function and form of 
matter, matter is a form of spirit. 

We may illustrate pantheism, with its denial of any ultimate 
distinction between God and the creature, between spirit and 
matter, soul and body, thus: Make a bottle out of ice by 
freezing water and then fill the ice-bottle with water. What 
is the difference between the bottle and the water in the bottle? 
A mere difference of form; melt the bottle and it becomes 
one with the water and runs back again into the ocean, the 
symbol of deity. As a cloud comes into view out of the 
invisible ether, takes on many forms, runs its course, and then 
disappears, returning into the invisible ether whence it came, 
so all forms of material and finite existence come from deity 
and go back again ultimately into deity. Absorption into 
deity is the end of all finite existence alike, whether it be 
good or bad—indeed, the distinction between things good and 
bad largely disappears under pantheism. The pantheist says 
it is impossible to conceive of the Infinite as a person. But 
in denying personality to God and individual immortality to 
man, pantheism robs man of all moral value, and God of 
everything that dignifies and ennobles him, and hence is prac- 
tically no better than materialism. 

“Nothing can possibly be less worthy of worship,” says 
Dr. W. H. P. Faunce, “‘than a being from whom are excluded 
by hypothesis all feeling, thinking, striving, intending, all love 
and hate, all experience warm and vital—a gigantic and in- 
credible abstraction. We cannot yield our souls in affectionate 
surrender to the binomial theorem, or to a logical deduction, 
or to the Hegelian Absolute. Philosophy, in attempting to 
exalt God above all change, has depressed him below all living 


52 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


reality.” “Unless the Absolute knows what we know when 
we endure and wait, when we love and struggle, when we 
long and suffer, the Absolute in so far is less and not more. 
than we are.” * “This whole false notion of the unchangeable- 
ness of God goes back to a metaphysically false and abandoned 
notion of an ever identical stuff or substance,’ writes Dr. 
Henry Churchill King, “and should no longer be allowed to 
obscure our religious thinking and living.” ° 

Let us turn from these vague and unsatisfying answers to 
those answers which define God in terms of personality and 
intelligence. 


5. Deism 


Deism teaches that there is a God, and that he created the 
world; but created things do not need his presence and the 
exercise of his power in order to continue in existence and 
fulfil their functions. The material world is placed under 
immutable law; while man, the rational and moral free agent, 
is left to do as he wills. God sustains, according to deism, 
very much the same relation to the universe that the clock- 
maker does to his time-piece. Having made his clock and 
wound it up, he does not need to interfere with it, and the 
longer it can run without the maker’s intervention the greater 
the evidence of wisdom and skill on the part of the maker. 
God, according to deism, has never wrought a miracle nor 
made a supernatural revelation to man. The only religion that 
is possible to man is natural religion. Man may and should 
reason from nature up to nature’s God, and from human nature 
up to human nature’s God. The only value of prayer is its 
subjective influence; it helps us to answer our own prayers; to 
pray helps us to become and be what we are praying to be, 
and to bring to pass what we are praying to have accomplished. 
If the Divine Being is a prayer-hearing God, he is at least 
not a prayer-answering God. The laws of nature constitute 
God’s general providence; but there is no other personal and 


1“What Does Christianity Mean?” p. 86. 
2 Josiah Royce, “The World and the Individual,” Vol. I, p. 364. 
3“The Seeming Unreality of the Spiritual Life,” D735: 


THE GOD WE SEEK 53 


special providence than this, according to deism. God, say 
they, is too great, too distant, too transcendent a Being to 
concern himself with the details of creaturely existence. 
Many people to-day are Deists; they cannot escape the convic- 
tion that this universe owes its existence and its laws to a 
personal intelligent Being; but they do not believe, at least 
they in no way act as if they believe, that he has anything to 
do with its on going, except through its uniform laws and 
physical forces. 


6. Agnosticism 


And thus we are bewildered with the multitudinous con- 
flicting and contradictory answers to the question, “Who is 
God?” Are we, therefore, forced to reject them all as un- 
satisfactory? Yes—we must reject all these. Shall we not 
say, then, that agnosticism is true—that there are so many 
gods that have been proved to be unreal and untrue that we 
do not know and cannot know anything about God? Indeed 
shall we not say, there is no real and true God—that God is 
after all only an unreal and imaginary Being? No; we cannot 
properly say this, because even agnosticism only disguises, it 
does not get rid of, God. It is, we must confess, not to be 
wondered at that agnostics, in support of their claim that God 
is and must ever remain the great unknown and unknowable, 
appeal to the fact that after all these ages of thinking and 
discussing about God, it is now as much a subject of inquiry 
as to who he is and what he is as it ever was. But, admitting 
this to be true, we may say it is also true that God is as much 
an object of faith and trust and love as he ever was—indeed 
more than he ever was. If God were such a Being that he did 
not awaken thought and inquiry and speculation and discus- 
sion, he would have to be a finite being so fully known and 
comprehended as to fall infinitely below what rational beings 
such as we are, demand, and must demand, in a God to com- 
mand ou reverence and adoration. What is the great Un- 
known and Unknowable affirmed by the logic and worshipped 
by the awe of the agnostic, asks Dr. Fairbairn, but ‘a con- 
fession that there are ideas which he will not name but from 


54 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


which he cannot escape—ideas that he must disguise in order 
that he may reason from them and at least seem to be consist- 
ent with his negation of knowledge. These ideas from which 
man cannot escape, whether he be a scientist, or a philosopher, 
or a theologian, are born of religion, and forever cause religion 
to be born anew within him. They are the ideas of a being 
who cannot think without thinking God. This means that he 
can just as little choose to be religious as to be rational; that 
he is both, and both by the same necessity of nature.” 

Nor can materialists any more get rid of God than agnostics. 
They who deny the personality and spirituality of the divine 
Being are compelled to recognise in nature an inscrutable 
Force which takes on the significance and many of the qualities 
of deity, even though it be impersonal. We must count, there- 
fore, among “the gods many and lords many” of mankind, 
the gods of materialism, of agnosticism and of pantheism, no 
less than those of fetishism, polytheism, dualism and deism. 

Counterfeit coins always prove the existence of true money 
somewhere, If there were not coins of silver and gold some- 
where that have real value there would be no counterfeits 
made. And the more counterfeits there are, the greater is 
the proof that there is a genuine and true coin somewhere, 
and that men know this fact. If there were not a genuine, 
real, true and living God somewhere in existence, men would 
not have made all these counterfeit gods—and these gods 
which are no gods are none the less counterfeits because reli- 
gion may be, and doubtless often is, just as real and sincere an 
expression of the God-given religious instinct in man when 
found in the heathen as it is when found in the true worshipper 
of the true God. For while we believe that the heathen may 
be saved, and that many of them are saved, it is the one 
true and only ‘God who saves them, even though they know 
him not, and not the non-real gods of their faith, which are 
but counterfeit substitutes for the true God. To be charitable 
towards the heathen who in his blindness bows down to wood 
and stone, and to recognise the possibility of the heathen being 
saved, must not be interpreted as a recognition or acknowledg- 
ment of any saving power in their gods. It simply means 


THE GOD WE SEEK 55 


that all men, even the heathen, are the children of the Heavenly 
Father, and that he judges all men with righteous judgment, 
in the light of their use or abuse of the standards and oppor- 
tunities which they enjoy in life. 

But it behooves those who have the genuine and true money 
tc put the counterfeit out of existence. And in like manner it 
behooves us who have knowledge of the true God to put our 
divine coin, with God’s own image and superscription on it, 
in circulation everywhere, that it may put out of existence 
the counterfeit substitutes that men have made to take its 
place. The Christian theistic idea of God is the only true 
coin of gold that can pass current without any discount in 
all the spiritual markets of the world where the standards 
ofthe assayers are at once rational and ethical. 


IT 
THE THEISTIC CONCEPTION OF GOD 


That Theism, which is the conception of God as a personal, 
spiritual Being, the Creator and Governor of the universe, fur- 
nishes a more rational and satisfactory answer to the question 
as to who God is than any of the many anti-theistic theories 
which we have considered, cannot fail to appear if the theistic 
conception of God and the grounds for believing it be ade- 
quately presented. 

It is said that when the Westminster Assembly of divines 
was engaged in preparing their famous Catechism and Confes- 
sion of Faith they found themselves unable to formulate a 
satisfactory answer to the question: “What is God?” In 
their perplexity it was suggested that they betake themselves 
to prayer for special divine guidance and help in their effort 
to give a worthy definition of the Divine Being. Whereupon 
the chairman called upon one of the youngest members pres- 
ent, a most deeply spiritual man, to lead in the supplication 
for divine assistance in the delicate and difficult task in which 
they were engaged. After a solemn and impressive silence 
of a few moments, the young divine began his invocation with 
a sentence somewhat like this: “O thou who art a Spirit infi- 


56 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


nite, eternal and unchangeable in thy being, wisdom, power, 
holiness, goodness, and truth, we humbly seek thy presence 
and guidance in the work which we have undertaken in thy © 
name.” When he had finished his prayer, the answer had 
come; for some one immediately moved that the opening 
sentence of that prayer be made their answer to the question. 
The suggestion met with favour, and that opening sentence, 
after some alterations and additions, was adopted as the defini- 
tion of God. 

While we cannot claim divine inspiration for the West- 
minster definition or any other theistic answer to the question 
“What is God?’—and all theistic definitions of God have 
been made only after devout and serious prayer for divine 
guidance in the work undertaken—we do make the claim that 
the theistic conception of God is altogether rational, and, 
making due allowance for an essential margin for mysticism 
and speculation that must belong to all truth in the realm of 
religion and theology, it is both rationally and spiritually sat- 
isfying. 


1. Belief.in God Distinguished from Theories about God 


People frequently confuse belief in God with theories about 
God. The former may be and should be definite and positive, 
even when the latter, men’s theories about God’s nature and 
mode of activity, are characterised by a degree of uncertainty 
and by more or less of confusion. To ask questions as to 
who God is, what he is, and where he is, takes one necessarily 
beyond the bounds of clear and definite faith into the realm 
of speculative thought, where men who are equally intelligent 
and equally devout in their faith and trust in a divine Being 
may give different answers which reveal serious differences in 
their conceptions of God; and yet they may be not only equally 
religious but so thoroughly united in their common faith in 
God as to make worship at a common altar mutually pleasing 
and in a high degree spiritually edifying. That is to say, no 
matter how definite and clear and satisfying faith in a per- 
sonal God may be, there is always left a wide range for specu- 
lative thought to roam in; and the fact that in this speculative 


THE GOD WE SEEK 57 


realm a certain vagueness and confusion are found should not 
be allowed to disturb unduly the calm confidence of the devout 
believer and worshipper, and cause him to believe that God is 
unknowable. 

The history of theism reveals two stages in its progressive 
development,—that represented by Hebrew monotheism and 
that presented in the final and perfect revelation of Jesus Christ. 
It is to the Old and New Testament Scripture conception of 
God, then—and to the religious experience and life and con- 
sciousness developed in them and produced by them—that we 
must turn for the only answer that can satisfy us as to who 
and what and where God is. Hebrew monotheism and Chris- 
tian theism constitute not two answers, but one historically 
developed and progressively perfected answer to man’s age- 
old inquiry concerning God. 


2. Hebrew Monotheism 


The most significant single sentence in all literature is the 
opening sentence of the Holy Scriptures, “In the beginning 
God created the heavens and the earth,” and the most signifi- 
cant word in this sentence is ““God.’”’ Why did not the sacred 
writer explain the word; why did he not begin by proving 
that such a Being exists, and that he is possessed of such 
and such divine attributes? On the other hand, he begins by 
assuming a knowledge of God on the part of the reader— 
and this assumption is itself one of the most significant things 
in this opening sentence. As a matter of fact, the Bible, al- 
though it begins by assuming God’s existence, does furnish 
in the course of its abundant and varied literature the best 
possible proof of his existence, and sets forth in the most 
luminous and satisfying manner the many divine attributes 
which enter into his being and define his nature. If, therefore, 
any one may be supposed to begin the reading of the Bible 
uncertain as to who and what is meant by “God” in the open- 
ing sentence, it is inconceivable that he should, in concluding 
the reading of it, be in any uncertainty as to the meaning and 
contents of this significant word as used in the Bible. When 
the opening sentence that declares that God in the beginning 


58 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


created the heavens and the earth is followed by the further 
statement that he made one of his creatures, man, in his own 


image, we have a declaration which helps us to understand_ 


God in that it enables us to use our more perfect knowledge 
of man’s nature to interpret and explain to us the divine 
nature. 

The name for God which was peculiar to the Hebrews was 
Jehovah—or “Jahweh,’’ as modern Hebrew scholars say it 
ought to be designated in English. It is supposed to be derived 
from the Hebrew word for “to be’—Jehovah is the Being 
who is, who exists in himself, who causes things to be. In- 
stead of deriving his name from the verb “‘to be,” it would, 
perhaps, be more in accord with the truth to say that the verb 
“to be’ comes from him and would not have any existence 
but for his Being. He is the Being who causes all other beings 
to be. Another significant designation of Deity in the He- 
brew Scriptures is that which refers to him as “the Holy One 
of Israel.” Holiness was perhaps the most characteristic of all 
the divine attributes in the Hebrew conception of God. But 
we have the highest authority for saying that the first and 
greatest of all the Hebrew commandments concerning God is 
this: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord: and 
thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with 
all thy soul, and with all thy might.” 

Of all the declarations made concerning God in the Old 
Testament this last statement was most of all pleasing to 


our Lord. He made it to be “the first and greatest com- 


mandment.”’ 

In no way can we study to better advantage the conception 
of Deity that is characteristic of Hebrew monotheism than in 
the writings of the Old Testament prophets whose passion for 
righteousness found its inspiration in the God whom they 
worshipped and whom Matthew Arnold defined as ‘“The Eter- 
nal, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness.”’ 

According to the Hebrew prophets, God is that infinite and 
perfect Being who has existed from all eternity in the unity 
of his uncreated personality; that he is the Creator and Pre- 
server of all things both visible and invisible, and the holy 


EE 


THE GOD WE SEEK 59 


and righteous Governor of all rational and moral beings. In 
attributing personality, spirituality, unity, and holiness to God, 
the Hebrew nation rose immeasurably above all the nations of 
antiquity, and thereby gave ethical and spiritual religion its 
highest and most perfect expression in the ancient world. 
This is Hebrew monotheism ; and yet even this is an inadequate 
and incomplete answer to the question: ‘“Who is God?” We 
must look to the New Testament and to Christ for the an- 
swer that will alone satisfy the head and the heart and the 
conscience of man. 


3. Christian Theism 


Hebrew monotheism is theism, but it is not Christian the- 
ism. In view of the fact that all our studies and discussions 
in these lectures are designed to lead us to a knowledge of that 
Divine Being who is revealed in the New Testament as the 
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ—in view of the 
fact that our studies begin, continue and end with the Chris- 
tian idea of God—we need here and now to give only a 
general statement of the Christian theistic conception of God. 
The chapters titled ““Through the Bible to God” and “Through 
Christ to God’ will present more fully the contents of the 
Christian revelation of God. 

The last of the inspired writers, St. John, begins the pro- 
logue to his Gospel with a sentence only a little less significant 
than that which begins the Old Testament Scriptures—viz. : 
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
_ God, and the Word was God. . . . All things were made by 
him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” 
This recognises a duality in the Deity—the existence of a sec- 
ond Person who not only was with God in the beginning, but 
was God. This metaphysical and philosophical term, ‘‘Word,” 
is not, however, the best term through which to interpret 
the New Testament conception of God. “God is Spirit,” “God 
is life,’ “God is light,” ‘God is love.” These sentences, found 
in the writings of St. John, furnish us with the terms through 
_ which we can best approach the study of the Christian doctrine 

of God—Father, Son, Spirit, life, light and love. While the 


60 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Old Testament had declared that God was a Being to be loved 
as well as to be feared and reverenced, it yet failed to make 
God altogether lovable. His personality and unity, his power 
and goodness and holiness, were all recognised and set forth 
as clearly in the Old Testament as.was possible anywhere, but 
it was not until Christ came that God had an interpreter and 
revealer who could adequately set forth the infinite love of the 
divine nature and make him an altogether lovable Being. This 
he was able to do because in him as the Son dwelt all the ful- 
ness of the Godhead bodily. “He that hath seen me hath seen 
the Father,” he said to Philip; and again he said, “And no 
man knoweth the Father, save the Son, and he to‘whomsoever 
the Son will reveal him.” Of all Christ’s parables, none has so 
taken hold upon the heart of the whole world as the parable 
of the prodigal son; but the greatness of that parable is not 
found in the penitential return of the prodigal to his home, but 
rather in the greatness and tenderness of the father’s love 
for his penitent child, and in the fact that it is meant to reveal 
to us the depth of love in the Father-heart of God. 

One of the most fundamental of Christ’s declarations con- 
cerning God, that uttered to the woman of Samaria at Jacob’s 
well—“God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must wor- 
ship him in spirit and in truth’—is something more than a 
reaffrming of the fact of God’s spirituality as taught in the 
Old Testament. Christ revealed the Holy Spirit as a third 
person in the Godhead and declared that through him his own 
redeeming work was to be carried on in the salvation of indi- 
viduals and the evangelisation of the world. This he did while 
he was yet in the flesh. But not until the day of Pentecost 
is come do we have Christ’s full answer to the question: ‘“Who 
is God?” The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, three in One 
and One in three, represents the fulness of the Godhead as 
revealed in and through Christ. A triune God may transcend 
but does not contradict the finite reason of man. If the 
Trinity of the Godhead be an eternal challenge to the mind, 
taxing man’s reason and faith to the utmost, it is also an 
eternal answer to the heart, satisfying ‘as no other doctrine of 
deity ever has or can the deepest cravings of the human soul. 


THE GOD WE SEEK | 61 


‘All other religions represent man as seeking an indifferent 
God, and leave him crying out to God and getting no answer 
but the echo of his cry. The Christian religion reveals a God 
of infinite wisdom, holiness, and love, seeking all men as a 
father seeks his wandering child. The paths that lead to God 
are paths which the Son of God and the Spirit of God are 
ever travelling in search of those who are in search of their 
God and Father. 


4. Theistic Duahsm 


There is a form of Theistic Dualism more rational and 
tenable than that of Gnosticism, which perhaps deserves to 
be stated here. This form of dualism does not differ from 
prevalent theism in its view of God except in saying that he 
is not the Creator of matter—that is to say, God is the one 
and only supreme, uncreated, personal Spirit who has existed 
from all eternity. But matter also, according to this view, is 
eternal and has always existed just as it now exists so far 
as its essential attributes and properties are concerned. Mat- 
ter, however, with all its inherent properties, is and always 
has been the instrument and tool of Spirit. Personal spirit, 
possessed of mind and will, uses, directs and controls matter 
for the accomplishment of rational and moral ends. What 
God creates, therefore, is not matter but spirit, finite spirit. 
The spirits that he creates bear his image; he is the Father of 
spirits. He governs the world in the interest of spirits. 
“Spirit comes to itself,’ as Dr. Temple has said, “through tak- 
ing possession of matter and using it.’ That is what matter 
exists for—to be used by spirit, and always has existed to 
serve this purpose. Plato was a theistic dualist and believed 
in the eternity of matter, holding that it was plastic material 
in the hands of God and of created spirits for the accomplish- 
ment of the ends and purposes of intelligence. 

Apart from affirming that matter, with all its properties 
and limitations, is as eternal as time and space and God, theis- 
tic Dualism detracts nothing from the Christian doctrine of 
God, and adds nothing to the properties or functions of mat- 
ter. Theistic dualists believe that the co-eternity of spirit 


62, THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


and matter is a conception not unworthy either of philosophy 
or of theology, and that it furnishes a theory of the universe 
that would at least lessen if it did not eliminate the difficulties 
which many have in reconciling the reign of law in the physical: 
world with the reign of mind and will in the realm of spirit. 
If theistic Dualism were accepted in philosophy as true, there 
would, it is claimed, be no conflict to settle between science 
and religion. But the trend of modern theistic philosophy 
is in quite an opposite direction from dualism. 


5. Traditional and Modérn Forms of Theism 


Theistic thought has undergone a change in recent years 
in its interpretation of God’s relation to and government of 
the world. Traditional theology in its conception of God had 
much in common with deism. It conceived of the world as 
created by a personal God and placed under the reign of 
natural laws as “‘secondary causes,” after which God removed 
himself, so to speak, to his dwelling place, which was separate 
and apart, and more or less distant, from the world. So far 
traditional theology was in accord with deism. But it differed 
with and from deism in saying that God was not only an ob- 
servant and ever-interested spectator of what was going on in 
the world, but held himself ready to “come down’’ from heaven, 
his dwelling place, in answer to the prayers of men—or when- 
ever, in the observing of human affairs, he found it wise to— 
interfere with the ordinary operations of nature’s laws and 
work miracles or “special providences.’’ These special mirac- 
ulous interventions of his power in the realm of natural law, 
and in the realm of human free agency in the form of answers 
to prayer and special providences, were looked upon as neces- 
sary in order to prove his existence and his presence and 
power in the government of the world. And these special 
visitations were thought to be more significant and impressive 
by the fact that he “came down” from a more or less distant 
dwelling place in the heavens to accomplish these displays of 
his power on the earth. This traditional anthropomorphic 
type of theism placed its chief emphasis upon the transcend- 
ence of God—upon his separateness from our world, his aloof-. 


THE GOD WE SEEK 63 


ness, his “‘above-ness’”—and might not improperly be desig- 
nated as deistic theism. 

Wherein now, let us ask, does modern Christian theism, as 
represented by its best interpreters and exponents, differ from 
this deistic theism of traditional theology? We answer, by 
transferring the whole emphasis in its conception of God’s re- 
lation to the world from the transcendence to the immanence 
of the divine Power that not only created the world but sus- 
tains it by a relationship so essential and ceaseless that the 
world could no more continue without 'God than it could have 
begun to be without him. This transference of the emphasis 
from the transcendence to the ‘immanence of God could not 
fail to result in a ‘reinterpretation of God and of nature and 
the supernatural. 

Seeing that much depends upon our understanding this doc- 
trine of the Divine Immanence, if we are going to view God 
and nature with the eye of a modern Christian theist, it is 
necessary that we keep clearly in mind the points wherein 
pantheism, deism and deistic theism differ from this modern 
form of theism. It will be recalled, therefore, that pantheism 
affirms God’s immanence, but denies his transcendence, while 
deism affirms his transcendence, but denies his immanence. 
But Christian theism teaches that God is both transcendent 
and immanent. By the term transcendence, when applied to 
God, is meant that the Divine Being is a person, separate and 
distinct from nature and above nature—‘‘nature’”’ being used 
here in its largest significance as including all created things. 
By the Divine Immanence is meant that God is in nature as 
well as over nature, and that the continuance of nature is as 
directly and immediately dependent upon him as is the origin 
of nature—indeed, by some, God’s preservation of the created 
universe is defined as an act of “continuous creation.” By 
the Divine Immanence is meant something more than omni- 
presence, which term, in itself alone, does not affirm any 
causal relation between God and the thing to which he is 
present, whereas the term immanence does affirm such causal 
relation. 

By asserting the Divine Immanence, therefore, as expressing 


64 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


the mode of God’s providential efficiency, we affirm that all 
created things are dependent upon him for continued exist- 
ence, that the laws of nature have no efficiency apart from 
their Creator and Preserver, that God is to be sought and 
seen in all forms and phases of creaturely existence, in the 
natural as well as the supernatural and miraculous, that he 
is not only omnipresent but always and everywhere active 
both in the natural and the spiritual world, and that without 
him neither the material atom, nor the living organism, nor the 
rational soul, nor the vast universe of worlds, could have any 
being. He not only created all things, but “by him all things 
consist,’ that is, by him all things are preserved in beinv. 
God’s existence is not dependent upon the existence of any- 
thing else; but everything that exists is dependent upon him 
not only for its origin but for its continuance in being. “In 
him we live and move and have our being’’—and in him, 
in some true sense, all things have their being. 


PET 
REINTERPRETING GOD 


1. Enlarging Visions of God 


Getting a vision of God is like getting a vision of the 
heavens above us and of the atoms of matter—of the infinite 
and of the infinitesimal—around about us. For a long time 
men gazed at the heavens and saw only what their natural 
vision revealed—some six or seven thousand stars—and this 
was the measure of their universe. And then they invented 
the magnifying lens, and, looking through it at the heavens, 
they found that instead of six thousand stars there were 
sixty thousand to be seen, and then by scientific study they 
were able to make a more powerful lens that revealed a 
yet larger number of stars; and with each new added power 
to the lens the universe grew larger and larger, until now the 
number of visible worlds is numbered by millions—for the 
white light of the Milky Way is now seen to be an innumerable 
multitude of stars. And at the same time the lens was being 


THE GOD WE SEEK 65 


developed to reveal the worlds that light up the infinite stellar 
spaces another improved magnifying glass with a different 
lens was developed that revealed particles of matter so fine 
and small that hitherto no eye had seen them. And with each 
new added power to the magnifying glass this world of minute 
things has grown until now the mind is almost appalled at the 
vision of the infinitesimal minuteness of matter. 

In like manner our vision of God has been enlarged both 
extensively and intensively. As experience and history have 
increased the power of spiritual vision our knowledge of 
God has continually increased and we have revelations of the 
greatness of God and of his purposes far beyond what our 
fathers had or could have. And we find that more than they 
ever could see, his power and love and care enter into the 
minutest details of our life—that he is as truly in the smallest 
affairs of individual life as he is in the greatest affairs of 
nations and empires, and the vast universe. There is no limita- 
tion set to the increase of our knowledge concerning God. The 
revelations of the telescope and of the microscope made nec- 
essary new text books in astronomy and in physics; and the 
ever increasing experience of men with God and the larger 
observation of his activity both in nature and in history ought 
to make re-interpretations of him necessary. It would be a 
sad reflection upon us, indeed it would be an indictment of the 
genuineness of our experience with God, if we should remain 
forever content with the conceptions of God and with the 
interpretations of him which satisfied our fathers in ages now 
long past. 


2. The Faith that Abides While Faiths Change 


The reason why the Christian faith lives from age to age 
is because it is not only capable of reinterpretation but de- 
mands reinterpretation, and grows greater and more convinc- 
ing every time it is truly interpreted. The reinterpretation of 
Christianity is in a sense always going on, though this is less 
manifest in some ages than others. I am persuaded that the 
day is not far distant when the fermenting wine of thought 
and faith pent up within the present old, unyielding wineskins 


66 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


of the historic creeds will burst their bottles, unless we provide 
new bottles for the new wine. 

God ought to be a greater God to us than he was to the 
Hebrew prophets or to the early Christian fathers. He has 
wrought wonders in the world since these ancient believers 
lived and died, and God ought to mean more to us than 
to them, and our conception and interpretation of him ought 
to bring him nearer to us. This closer and deeper experience 
with God ought to make him more real to us; and this is really 
the final test of the correctness of our answer to the questions 
we have been asking as to who he is, what he is, and where 
he is:—Is our conception of God reinforced by reality in 
experience and by correspondingly lofty types of manhood and 
womanhood in those who have this conception ? 

Religions die, but religion lives in spite of their death. In- 
deed, religion lives because religions die. If a religion will 
not suffer itself to be reinterpreted,—if it cannot be reinter- 
preted without destroying it,—it will die, and ought to die, 
in order that religion may live; for, as the human race pro- 
gresses intellectually and morally, it will demand a different, 
and ever higher and better expression of religious faith. 

Churches die, but the Church lives; and the Church lives 
because churches die. If there be churches that will not change, 
that cannot adapt themselves to new conditions and to the new 
ways of thinking that are an essential accompaniment of all 
human progress, they will die, and ought to die; and because 
of their death, the Church will live—live and grow. 

Creeds die and pass away; but faith lives; and faith lives 
because creeds die and pass away. If creeds cannot change 
they will die and ought to die and pass away, and this in order 
that faith may live. .Every successful revision of a creed 
that is out of date is an aid to faith in God and Christ. If it 
be true that “to doubt at the right place and at the right time 
is the best cure for doubt,” then is it also true that to dogmatise 
at the wrong place and in the wrong manner—to insist on men 
believing what they will not believe and cannot believe—is the 
surest road to rational rebellion and religious scepticism. This 
is why creed-revisers are not creed destroyers but creed-savers. — 


THE GOD WE SEEK 67 


The man who first criticised the traditional interpretation of 
the Mosaic account of creation as six literal days, and argued 
that the days must refer to periods or geologic days, was 
accused of trying to destroy faith in the Bible; but it turned 
out that he was not destroying faith in the Bible, but saving 
it. Reinterpretations of God and the Bible may modify and 
destroy old interpretations, but they do not destroy faith in 
God or the Bible itself,—they save and enrich and strengthen 
faith in that which liveth and abideth forever. 

The gods of men die and pass away, but God lives on; 
and God lives because the gods of men die. If they had not 
died in the past after having served their day and generation, 
God would be dead. Faith in God would have died out of 
the minds of rational and cultured men and civilised nations 
if Jupiter, and Juno, and Mars and Minerva; Isis and Osiris, 
Marduk and Ishtar, Baal and Dagon, and Chemosh had not 
died long ago. It was because such gods as they were died, 
and got out of the way, that the path that leads to the only 
‘true and living God was cleared, that men might walk in it. 
This means, to adapt to our uses the poet’s familiar lines, that 


These gods of men all had their day; 
They had their day and ceased to be— 
They were but broken lights of Thee, 

And Thou, O God, art more than they. 


IV 
WHERE IS GOD? 


1. God’s Dwelling Place 


The brightest star in the Pleiades is the one called Alcyone. 
The astronomers tell us that all the suns and stars in the uni- 
verse, together with their “solar systems,” are in motion, and 
they used to tell us that they all seem to be revolving around 
this radiant and beautiful star as a centre. They are not as 
certain of this now, I believe, as they once were, but I remember 
hearing a teacher of astronomy say in my college days, on the 
assumption that Alcyone was at the centre of the universe, that 


68 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


he thought that Heaven and the throne of God must be located 
on that star. The statement appealed powerfully to my boy- 
ish imagination and fitted well into the materialistic ideas I 
formed in my childhood as to God’s being up in heaven, and 
having his home and his throne up there, and of his coming 
down ever and anon from Heaven to earth. Surely the 
Christian Heaven, I thought, must be up in the heavens that 
appear so glorious every starry night. God had to be in some 
one place—and what dwelling place could be more beautiful 
than the Pleiades, with its seven radiant stars to light it? Did 
not Elijah and Christ both ascend into this same starry heaven 
when they left the earth and went to God? The suggestion 
is as beautiful as it is fanciful; but it vanishes into less than 
thin air and becomes of even less value theologically than it 
is as a scientific suggestion when, in studying the nature of 
Spirit, both finite and infinite, we are compelled to give up 
materialistic ideas of spirit and such anthropomorphic repre- 
sentations of God as are involved in this suggestion as to 
God’s geographical dwelling place. We cannot, therefore, 
answer the question as to where God is by making even this 
brightest of the Pleiades to be his place of abode. 


2. God’s Omnipresence and Immanence 


Both reason and revelations compel us to think of God as 
omnipresent and immanent. By virtue of his omnipresence ~ 
every point and every object in infinite space may be said to 
be equally present to him, and he is at one and the same time 
in perfect and immediate communication with every conscious, 
rational spirit in infinite space. By virtue of his immanence 
he is everywhere and all the time active, and what we call 
the laws of nature and of life are but an expression of his 
power and ceaseless activity. 

“God’s omnipresence as a doctrine of religion,’ says Dr. 
Gwatkin, “simply means that his action is not hindered by 
distance like ours, but is as direct in any one place as in any 
other ; this immanence means, further, that the common works 
of nature are as truly divine acts as anything we can imagine 
done by a miracle.” 


THE GOD WE SEEK 69 


“As living spirits,’ says Dr. R. H. Relton, “we infinitely 
transcend our material bodies in every particle of which we 
immanently dwell. What we are to our bodies, that God is 
to the whole creation—immanent in the whole, and in every 
minutest part, yet transcendent above the whole as the sole 
condition of indwelling in any part.” “What we mean when 
we say that there is a spiritual power behind the spiritual 
universe, is, that there is behind this universe something akin 
to the spirit in ourselves.”’ 


3. God’s Real and Abiding Presence 


But in answering the question, “Where is God?” our con- 
cern is not to discover his geographical dwelling place in space, 
nor his “real presence” in the holy sacramental grail, nor yet 
to furnish a metaphysical argument to prove a spirit’s inde- 
pendence of space, but our concern is to emphasise the ever 
present possibility of finding God in experiencing a satisfying 
sense of his spiritual presence. Christ told the Samaritan 
‘woman at Jacob’s well how and where to find God, and his 
words to her the whole world was, as it were, waiting to hear. 
When our Lord said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one 
of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me,” he was telling 
where and how to find him. When he said of waiting and 
worshipping souls, gathered together for meditation and prayer, 
after seeking and serving their fellow men, that “Where two 
or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the 
midst of them,” he was telling how and where he is to be found 
by each and every sincere seeker after God. Air cannot so 
surely and quickly find the open door to a vacuum and rush in 
and fill it, as God is to find and enter into and fill the soul that 
opens to him the door of a loving heart, that has proved its 
love by sympathetic and self-sacrificing service to one’s fellow 
men. We do not therefore have to wait until we get to the 
end of life’s journey to find the dwelling place of God and to 
dwell with him. The pure in heart see God and dwell in the 
sunshine of his presence not simply hereafter in heaven, 
but here and now on the earth. 

And yet there is surely a sense in which the vision of God 


70 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


and fellowship with him will be more real and more satisfy- 
ing when the Christian pilgrim’s eyes are no longer veiled in 
flesh, but, being in the very presence of the hitherto invisible 
God, he looks upon him face to face, and knows him even as 
he is known by him. 


I sought the Lord in sun and stars, 
And where the wild seas roll, 

And found him not. As mute I stood, 
Fear overwhelmed my soul; 

But when I gave to one in need 

I found the Lord of Love indeed. 


I sought the Lord in lore of books, 
In charts of science skill; 
They left me orphaned as before— 
His love eluded still; 
Then in despair I breathed a prayer; 
The Lord of Love was standing there! 
—THOMAS CuRTIS CLARK. 


CHAPTER THREE 


RELIGION AND RELIGIONS AS RELATED 
TOUGOD 


ay re ex ti 
‘sn a 
nat) Nae est i} 


ya ie, 





Cuarrer THREE 
RELIGION AND RELIGIONS AS RELATED TO GOD 


I 
WHAT IS RELIGION? 


Having answered the question “Who is God?”’, it is fitting 
that we ask and answer briefly the question, “What is Re- 
ligion?”, for God and religion sustain to each other such a 
vital relation that neither can be understood or explained with- 
out a knowledge of the other. Religion has found expression 
in the religions of the world, and we can understand religion 
only by understanding something of the religions that en- 
shrine it and constitute its outward and visible expression. 
Religion may be defined in its subjective aspect as man’s atti- 
tude toward and relation to the Divine Being, or the super- 
natural and superhuman Powers of the universe—or what 
are supposed by the worshipper to be such—and, objectively, - 
as the visible methods and forms employed to express that 
attitude and relationship of men to the divine Being. We wish 
to consider religion and the religions of the world, as constitut- 
ing for mankind a divinely provided pathway to God. 


1. The Origin of Religion 


There are three theories as to the origin of religion—that 
of traditional theology, inherited by us all and familiar to us 
all, which holds that religion started in a perfect and divine, 
though primitive, form with the first man and woman, who » 
were created physically, intellectually, and morally perfect 
by their Maker. The second theory is that of materialistic 
and atheistic evolution which holds that religion is the super- 
stitious faith of primitive savages born of fear, of illusion 
and delusion, and that it will disappear as soon as evolution 


_has carried the development of the human race to a state where 
73 


74 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


their beliefs will be determined by intelligence and reason 
rather than by fear, superstition and imagination. I need not 
dwell upon either of these: not upon the first, because it is 
perfectly familiar to all of us as the inherited and long prev-. 
alent faith of the Christian Church; and not upon the second 
because it belongs to a conception of the universe to which I 
shall give no consideration in this volume further than to state 
what it is at the proper place, and to discredit it. 

But the third view, that held by those who believe both in 
a personal God and in evolution as the method by which re- 
ligion and the religions of the world have come to be what they 
are, seeing that it is held by a number of Christian believers 
which is not only large but constantly increasing, deserves to 
be stated, and to be stated by one who believes in it. 

Professor Sanday, the eminent theologian and scholar of 
Oxford, England, describes the primitive origin of religion 
and the process of its gradual development into higher forms, 
as follows in his monograph on ‘Natural and Revealed Re- 


ligion” : 


“The stage of religion begins at that point in the evolution 
of the race where there grows up a sense or impression of a 
Something outside which co-operates with or thwarts the im- 
pulses or desires from within. At first the idea of this Some-_ 
thing was very vague. Men looked about them to see if 
they could identify it in anything near them that they could 
hear or see. The multitude of objects confused them. But 
it was natural that they should guess at something of unusual 
shape, or that gave forth an unusual sound, or that in some 
way was weird and strange. It was in this way that primitive 
man arrived at Fetishism or Totemism. Fetishism would take 
the form of some prominent and curious stump or stone. 
Totemism would take the form of some uncanny beast or 
bird or reptile. Totemism might give place to animal-worship 
on a larger scale, as the ancient world was full of fierce and 
savage beasts which were formidable enemies of man. 

“Meantime other causes would be at work. The images 
that float before the mind in dreams would be the first to 
suggest the idea of spirits. .. . Such mental processes as 


RELIGION AND RELIGIONS 75 


these would explain the rise of different kinds of Animism. 
One of the most distinctive and highest forms of Animism 
was ancestor-worship, which was very widespread in remote 
antiquity. By the time we have come to ancestor-worship, 
however, we are really entering upon a higher region in the 
realm of religion. Anthropomorphism was a distinct advance 
upon animal-worship. To invest the idea of deity with the 
qualities of men was at least better than to invest it with qual- 
ities of lower animals. By this time the human mind had be- 
gun to climb the staircase of the ideal. The abstract idea of 
deity was being formed; and the step from the abstract to the 
spiritual idea was not so very long. Before this point has 
been reached, however, we are already conscious of a great 
widening of the horizon. The worship of the greater Powers 
of Nature must stand high in the scale of religious values.” - 


2. Religion as Interpreted by Theistic Evolutionists 


The author of the following paragraphs was a believer in 
tke scientific doctrine of evolution, but he was also, and even 
more if anything, a believer in “the everlasting reality of re- 
ligion.”’” I say “even more” because he believed that the fact 
of religion, the universality of man’s outgoing after and wor- 
ship of God, is so manifest, and so potent and persistent, that 
if the doctrine of evolution cannot make room for it, and rec- 
ognise it, and adjust itself to it as a fact, then so much the 
worse for evolution—it must be given up as a theory for 
explaining the development of our world. It is well for us 
to have set before us statements that will show what a repre- 
sentative evolutionist thinks of religion. However obscure, 
humble and lowly he may conceive its origin, no one can have 
a higher estimate of its influence and end in the human race 
than does John Fiske. He says: 


“None can deny that religion is the largest and most ubiq- 
uitous fact connected with the existence of mankind upon 
the earth. Now, if the relation thus established in the morn- 
ing twilight of man’s existence between the human soul and 
a world invisible and immaterial is a relation of which only 
the subjective term is real and the objective term is nonexistent, 


76 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


then, I say, it is something utterly without precedent in the 
whole history of creation. All the analogies of evolution, so 
far as we have yet been able to decipher it, are overwhelmingly 
against any such supposition. To suppose that through count-’ 
less ages from the seaweed up to man, the progress of life 
was achieved through adjustments to external realities, but 
that then the method was all at once changed and throughout 
a vast province of evolution the end was secured through ad- 
justment to external nonrealities, is to do sheer violence to 
logic and to common sense. . . . All the analogies of nature 
fairly shout against the assumption of such a breach of con- 
tinuity between the evolution of man and all previous evolu- 
tion. So far as our knowledge of nature goes, the whole mo- 
mentum of it carries us onward to the conclusion that the un- 
seen world, as the objective term in a relation of fundamental 
importance that has co-existed with the whole career of man- 
kind, has a real existence; and it is but following out the anal- 
ogy to regard that unseen world as the theatre where the ethical 
process is destined to reach its full consummation. The lesson 
of evolution is that through all these weary ages the human soul 
has not been cherishing in religion a delusive phantom, but in 
spite of seemingly endless groping and stumbling it has been 
rising to the recognition of its essential kinship with the ever- 
living God. Of all the implications of the doctrine of evolu- 
tion with regard to man, I believe the very deepest and strong- | 
est to be that which asserts the everlasting reality of religion. 
Our common-sense argument puts the scientific presumption 
entirely and decisively on the side of God and religion and 
against all atheistic and materialistic explanations of the uni- 
verse. The infinite and eternal Power that is manifested in 
every pulsation of the universe is none other than the living 


God.”’ 


3. Lhe Ubiquity and Influence of Religion in History 


The primitive appearance and all dominating influence of 
religion in the human race is the outstanding fact of history. 
Whether it be a thing of magic or superstition, as it is among 
savage tribes, or the crown of glory of a people as it is among 
the most civilised and cultured nations of the earth where it 
finds its most perfect expression in the highest ethical charac- 


RELIGION AND RELIGIONS 7 


ter, it is always and everywhere a potent force, generally for 
good, though sometimes the good it does is not unmixed with 
evil. 

The ubiquity of religion with its all-penetrative and com- 
manding action means not simply that man possesses religion, 
but that it possesses him, and is the mother of all his order, all 
his art and all his architectonic ideas. Till religion, therefore, 
is explained, says Dr. Fairbairn, man is inexplicable, and only 
as religion is made pure and strong can man be made perfect. 
Religion is so essential to man that he cannot escape from it. 
It besets him behind and before, penetrates him, holds him 
even against his will. It comes into being without any man 
willing it, or any man making it; and as it began so it con- 
tinues. In hours of revolt individual men may will to have 
nothing to do with religion; but nature and instinct are stronger 
than will, and religion in some form both of idea and usage 
inevitably returns. 

It is in his religion that man most truly knows himself to 
be a man, and through religion that he realises his manhood. 
His first attempts to interpret nature are governed by religious 
ideas, and from his last attempts they are inseparable. He 
must, because he is rational, think, and what is the thought of 
a rational being but a factor which relates him to the Infinite 
and the Eternal. Language in all its terms is instinct with 
religious feeling. In theology, which is the thought of God, 
philosophy begins, and in theology science ends. Religion is 
as it were, so built into man’s nature as to be the very heart 
of his being. Religion then being the imperial idea of all 
our being and all our thinking, the regulative principle in 
human conduct, the architectonic force in society and the most 
commanding single influence in history, it follows that he who 
can create its most perfect form is the supreme benefactor of 
the human race—the foremost person not only in the world’s 
religions but in all history.* 

To say all this is to bring us into His presence who called 


1See Fairbairn’s ‘Philosophy of the Christian Religion,” from which 
most of these luminous statements concerning the nature and influence 
of religion have been taken—but not without such freedom and changes in 
form and phraseology as make it seem best not to use quotation marks. 


78 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


himself the Son of Man, but whom others adoringly called 
the Son of God. And that which more than anything else 
led men to so designate him was the interpretation and revela- 
tion which he brought to men of God. | 


II 
HEATHEN SEEKERS AFTER GOD 


Aristotle taught that the real nature of anything which 
undergoes a process of development is not what it is at the 
beginning, but what it becomes after the idea of its nature is 
fully developed and realised. Quite the opposite of this was 
the theory of Herbert Spencer with regard to religion in that 
he maintained that if we are to discover the true nature of 
religion, we must go back to primitive man and the benighted 
savage. If Herbert Spencer is right we are to explain re- 
ligion as a superstition and delusion. If Aristotle is right we 
must judge religion as to what it is and was meant to be by 
that highest development and finest expression of it that we 
find in Christianity. 


1. The Science of Comparative Religion 


For a long time it was customary to explain heathen reli-_ 
gions one and all as the thoughts and works of those who loved 
darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil, as 
the creations of ungodly and wicked men who did not wish to 
retain the knowledge of the true and holy God in their minds 
because he condemned them; and they therefore made their 
gods like unto themselves.t These Scripture statements made 
with reference to some heathen have been applied, to all 
heathens. The religions of the heathen world, being thus in- 
terpreted as of satanic-human rather than divine-human origin, 
were regarded as the faiths and delusions and spiritual vaga- 
ries of those who were wilfully and wickedly travelling the 
paths that lead not towards but away from the true God. But 
these various religions of the world are now almost universally 
regarded by students of Comparative Religion as the honest 


1 Romans 1: 18-32. 


RELIGION AND RELIGIONS 79 


though blind gropings after God of those who, having lost 
the true path, are yet trying to follow the best light they have, 
even though that light be as darkness when compared with 
the knowledge of God possessed by those who have learned 
from Christ who God is and what he is like. The former 
attitude towards heathen religions was based on the assump- 
tion that originally there was but one religion, that it was true 
and divine and recognised by all as such; and that it was man’s 
fallen and sinful condition that led to the utter degradation of 
religion. The present attitude towards these religions is based 
on the supposition that the movement of mankind generally 
in its religious history has been in the opposite direction, that 
it has been upwards from the lower to something higher and 
better, and through the higher to the highest—which is the 
Christian religion with its conception of the divine Being as 
a holy and loving Father.* 

Following Aristotle rather than Herbert Spencer, let us 
study religion as it has found expression in some of the great 
religions of the world and judge each of them by what it 
is, or seems to be, taken at its best, rather than at its worst. 
The former method of interpreting the heathen religions 
which prevailed among Christian theologians was scarcely less 
unjust to them than was Herbert Spencer’s method unjust to 
religion generally; this was to take the heathen religions at 
their worst, in their grossest forms and most objectionable 
features, but to take Christianity in its highest and best ex- 
pression. By so doing it was easy to show that the position 
then maintained was true, namely, that all heathen religions 
were evil and only evil continually, were the offspring of the 
devil and an abomination to God, while the Christian religion 
alone came from God and is therefore wholly good and alto- 
gether true. 

No one who has studied the modern science of Comparative 
Religions can fail to note the change in attitude towards 
heathen religions to which we have referred. Thus Profes- 
sor E. D. Soper of Northwestern University says: 


_ +See F. B. Jevons, “Introduction to the Study of Comparative Re- 
ligion,” pp. 18, 24, 25. 


80 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


“The easy way in which through many centuries of history 
the theologians accounted for the non-Christian religions of 
the world was to refer them to the devil as the author. This 
was a simple solution of a difficult problem, and it was adopted ~ 
by the Christian Church generally until within the past cen- 
tury; but it was too simple to be permanently convincing and 
has therefore generally been discarded. No Christian who is 
familiar with modern Christian thought and in sympathy with 
its tendencies can be indifferent to the religion of any people, 
or blind to anything whatsoever that may be good and true in 
it, but he must be able to combine in his own faith two con- 
victions. The first is the fundamental Christian conviction 
that Christianity is the only faith adequate to meet the needs 
of all men. Christianity as a propagating, conquering faith 
would have ceased to exist long ago but for this conviction. 
A religion lives and grows by the intensity of its belief in its 
own peculiar worth and power. “There is none other name un- 
der heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.’ 

“But with this conviction, another must be held to save the 
belief just expressed from becoming exclusive and intolerant 
and from taking the position that, as Christianity is the only 
true faith, so all others must be false and ought to be harried 
to death as soon as possible. The true Christian attitude, 
however, is quite different; but it recognises that the word 
‘false’ is not the proper word to use with reference to these 
religions. Reserving that word for the sordid and insincere, 
for the unworthy and base among the adherents of any reli- 
gion, Christianity included, the true Christian cannot but look 
upon all religions as the expression of man’s longing for 
God and as the method by which, following the best light he 
has, he attempts to find God and obtain his blessing.” * 


Among the causes that have brought about this change in 
attitude towards the so-called heathen religions, nothing, 
strange to say, has been so potent as the study of ancient his- 
tory and especially of the ancient religions, in the light of 
new archeological discoveries. Of the very highest value, his- 
torical, literary and religious is the rich and large contribution 

1See “The Religions of Mankind,” pp. 15, 16, 30, which has been 


liberally drawn upon for the sentiments and sentences found in these two 
paragraphs. 


RELIGION AND RELIGIONS 81 


which archeology has made to the history of religion in an- 
cient Greece, Babylonia, Persia and Egypt, whose inhabitants 
were among the most deeply religious people in the world, as 
shown by their monuments. We use the religions of these 
four peoples as examples and illustrations in our study of 
heathen religions for two reasons: First, they were co-extant 
with the religion of the Old Testament, and second, it is in 
these countries that archeologists have made their most im- 
portant discoveries. 


2. The Religions of Ancient Babylonia and Persia 


To quote the prayers and hymns of some of the most devout 
of these ancient worshippers will almost force us to take back 
much that we have said in criticism of polytheism and compel 
us to discriminate more carefully and say that, in spite of 
many crude, grotesque and debasing features in the polythe- 
ism of Babylonia and Egypt, there were, as we now know, 
other elements of a moral and spiritual nature that can be 
compared only with the finer spiritual elements of the Old 
Testament Psalms and the Hebrew prophets. We justify this 
statement by quotations. 

When Nebuchadnezzar ascended the throne he addressed 
the following prayer to his god.* | 


“O eternal Ruler! Lord of the universe! 
Grant that the life of the king whom thou lovest, 
Whose name thou hast called, exalting him to the throne, 
May flourish as seems good to thee. 
Guide him in the path of righteousness. 
I am the ruler who obeys thee, the creature of thy hands. 
It is thou who hast created me, 
Thou who hast entrusted to me the sovereignty over mankind. 
According to thy mercy, O Lord, which thou hast bestowed 
upon all, 
Cause me to love thy supreme rule. 
Implant the fear of thy divinity in my heart. 
Grant to me whatsoever may seem good before thee, 
Since it is thou that dost control my life.” 


1 The translations here given are taken from Boscawen. 


82 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


It is doubtful if Solomon in all his wisdom has much sur- 
passed this prayer—or David, indeed, or any other psalmist 
or prophet. We are not in the habit of thinking that the 
heathen kings who are described in the Old Testament as the 
enemies of God and man were accustomed to pray such prayers 
as this; and yet this prayer was addressed to the great god 
Marduk, and not to Jehovah, whom Nebuchadnezzar and his 
contemporaries regarded simply as Israel’s God. Nebuchad- 
nezzar was one of the most pious of the many heathen kings 
whom the Old Testament mentions. These kings, doubtless, 
were all as religious in their way as were the kings of Israel and 
Judah, and perhaps as true to their gods and their ideas of 
devotion. Nebuchadnezzar’s inscriptions are almost invari- 
ably closed with a prayer, and some of the noblest of these 
prayers, as to diction and elevation of thought, are offered at 
the dedication of temples which he had either built or re- 
stored. Thus— 


“O great Lord, upon entering joyfully into this thy glorious temple, 
Look with favour upon thy precious handiwork. 
Mercy toward me be thy command; 
Through thy righteous order may I have abundance of strength. 
Long life and a firm throne grant me. 
May my rule last forever! 
With a righteous sceptre of blissful rulership, 
With a legitimate staff, bringing salvation to mankind, adorn my 
sovereignty forever.” 


King Cyrus, according to the discoveries of modern arche- 
ology was a more than ordinarily religious ruler. The clay 
cylinders which bear his name tell the story not only of his 
valorous deeds, but also how he was blessed by the gods in 
reward for piety and devotion. They show that he regarded 
himself as the man of destiny. One of the inscriptions reads 
thus, “He [Merodach, his god] sought for, he found him, 
yea, he sought out an upright prince, after his own heart, 
whom he took by his hand, Cyrus, king of the city of Anshan; 
he called his name; to the sovereignty of the whole world he 
called him by name. Merodach, the great lord, the guardian 
of his people, beheld with joy the blessed deeds and his up- 


RELIGION AND RELIGIONS 83 


right heart; like a friend and helper he marched at his side.” 
Cyrus was a polytheist, and had no disposition to degrade and 
dethrone the gods of the peoples whom he conquered. More- 
over, his uniform policy as a conqueror was to restore exiled 
and captive peoples to their own lands. (See Ezrai. 2.) One 
of his inscriptions reads, “All of their peoples I gathered 
together and restored to their own dwelling places.”’ Com- 
pare with these inscriptions the statements found in the forty- 
fifth chapter of Isaiah, ‘Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, 
to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations 
before him. . . . I will go before thee, and make the crooked 
places straight. . . . I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, 
am the God of Israel. For Jacob my servant’s sake, and 
Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name: I have 
surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me.” The par- 
allelisms here found are certainly remarkable. Are they acci- 
dental, or was there some connection between these writings? 
Were the Gods of Cyrus and of “second” Isaiah as far apart 
as we have been taught to think? 

Among the sacred relics of the Orient which archeology 
has brought to light are found many penitential psalms uttered 
by the heathen in the worship of their gods. This is a speci- 
men: 


“T, thy servant, full of sighs, call upon thee; 
The fervent prayer of him who has sinned do thou accept. 
If thou lookest upon a man, that man lives. 
Besides thee, there is no guiding deity. 
I implore thee to look upon me and hear my sighs, 
The sin that I have committed I know not. 
Known or unknown god, my sins are many; great are my 
transgressions. 


Full of woe, I grovel in the dust without looking up. 
To my merciful God I turn, speaking with sighs. 
O Lord, look upon me; accept my lament. 


O Lord, do not cast aside thy servant overflowing with 
tears: take him by the hand. 

The sin I have committed change to mercy. 

The wrong I have done, may the wind carry off. 


84 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Tear asunder my many transgressions as a garment. 

My god, my sins are seven times seven: forgive me my 
sins. 

My goddess, my sins are seven times seven; forgive me 
my sins. 

Known or unknown god, my sins are seven times seven, 
forgive me my sins. 

Known or unknown goddess, my sins are seven times 
seven, forgive me my sins. 

Forgive me my sins, and I will humble myself before 
thee. 

May thy heart be glad (pacified) as the heart of a mother 
who has given birth; as that of a father who has 
begotten a child. 


Instead of food, I eat bitter tears; 

Instead of date-wine, I drink the waters of misery. 

For my drink I have bitter waters. 

Instead of clothes, I am enveloped in sin. 

O my god, who art angry with me, accept my prayer. 

© Lord, in mercy and compassion look upon me; 

O thou who guidest the span of life against the encroach- 
ments of death, hear my prayer. 


May my sins be forgiven, may my transgressions be 
blotted out. 

May the bond be loosened and the chain broken. 

May the seven winds carry off my sighs. 

Let me tear away my iniquity, and let the birds carry it 
to heaven. 

Let the fishes take off my misfortune, and the stream bear 
it far away. 

May the beasts of the field take it away from me. 

The flowing waters, may they wash me clean. 

Let me be pure like the sheen of gold. 

As a ring of precious stone, may I be precious before 
thee. 

Remove my iniquity, save my soul. 

Thy temple court will I watch, thy image will I set up.” 


Until archeology began to yield up its secrets, we certainly 
have not been accustomed to think of the heathen as uttering 
such devout and tender psalms of penitence as these. It is 
not strange that a race of people who worshipped the Divine 


RELIGION AND RELIGIONS 85 


Being in such prayers as the above could send forth an Abra- 
ham to bless the world and become the father of the faithful. 


3. The Religion of Ancient Egypt 


Not less remarkable are the results of archzological dis- 
covery in Egypt. Take for instance the hymns of adoration 
addressed by Amenhotep IV (who reigned from 1375 to 
1358, B.C.) which are found on the recently unearthed tab- 
lets of Tell-el-Amarna and which have been translated by 
Dr. J. H. Breasted of Chicago University, whose scholarly 
and scientific work in archeology has made the student world 
his debtor. ‘Take the following addressed to Aton, the Sun- 
God (also called Re) whom Amenhotep worshipped : 


O Living Aton, Beginning of life, 

Thy dawning is beautiful in the horizon of the sky. 

When thou risest in the eastern horizon, 

Thou fillest every land with thy beauty. 

Thou art beautiful, great, glittering, high above every land, 
Thy rays compass the lands, even all that thou hast made. 
Thou art Re, and thou carriest them all away captive; 
Thou bindest them by thy love. 


O sole God whose powers no other possesseth, 
How manifold are thy works; 
Thou didst create the earth according to thy heart while thou 
wast alone; 
Men, all cattle, large and small, 
All that are upon the earth, 
That go about upon their feet; 
All that are on high, 
That fly with their wings. 
Thou makest the Nile in the nether world, 
Thou bringest it as thou desirest, 
To preserve alive the people; 
For thou hast made them for thyself, 
, The Lord of them all, resting among them, 
Thou Sun of to-day, great in majesty! 
How excellent are thy designs, O Lord of eternity! 


We have in this worship of the Sun as God an example, a 
_ heathen example, of what may be called “through nature to 


86 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


God’’—only it is carried to excess. Or, shall we rather say it 
is not carried far enough, seeing that the worshipper is con- 
tent to stop with the creature (the sun) and worship it, when 
he ought to ascend higher, to the creature’s Creator ? 

Compare these words with the familiar and glorious utter- 
ances of the Hebrew poet found in the Nineteenth Psalm, 
beginning, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the 
firmament showeth his handiwork.” Or with the following 
no less significant and impressive utterances found in the 
twenty-ninth psalm: 


Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name,— 
Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. 


The voice of the Lord is upon the waters; 

The God of glory thundereth, 

Even the Lord upon many waters. 

The voice of the Lord is powerful; 

The voice of the Lord is full of majesty. 

The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars; 

Yea, the Lord breaketh in pieces the cedars of Lebanon. 
He maketh them also to skip like a calf; 
Lebanon and Sirion like a young wild-ox. 

The voice of the Lord cleaveth the flames of fire. 
The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness; 
The Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh. 

The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve, 
And strippeth the forests bare: 

And in his temple everything saith, Glory. 


Comparing the two, who feels like saying that the former 
is inspired of Satan and an abomination unto the Lord, while 
the latter is inspired of God and alone pleasing unto him? 
Are they not both outgoings of the soul towards God ?—the 
former towards the Divine One but dimly known, the latter 
towards One better known in that, though both worshippers are 
seekers after God, the latter only has learned that God, to be 
worshipped aright, must be worshipped “in the beauty of 
holiness.” “It is utterly out of the question,” says Dr. Sanday, © 
“to dismiss these things as products of unenlightened heathen- | 
ism. It is quite certain that they are part of the witness which — 
in every age God has left us of himself.” 





RELIGION AND RELIGIONS 87 


4. The Religions of Ancient Greece and Rome 


It was in ancient Greece where the gods and goddesses of 
the popular faith were enshrined in mythology, in art and in 
literature, that polytheism received its highest and most poetic 
form and found such expression and embodiment in the life 
and thought of the people that the names and deeds of the 
gods and goddesses became an important and permanent part 
of the classic literature of the world. Familiar to all students 
of literature and religion throughout the civilised world are the 
names and deeds of Jupiter, the king of the gods, with his 
throne on Mount Olympus; Mars, the god of war; Neptune, 
the god of the sea; Pluto, the god of the infernal regions; 
Juno, the spouse of Jupiter and the queen of heaven; Mi- 
nerva, the goddess of wisdom; Venus, the goddess of love and 
beauty; and innumerable other lesser gods and goddesses. 

The earliest of the Greek philosophers to think his way 
_ through and away from the anthropomorphic gods of Homer 
and Hesiod, and to interpret the divine Being as the One, all- 
controlling Godhead, was Xenophanes, the founder of the 
Eleatic school of philosophic thought in ancient Greece. He 
taught that ‘‘God is all eye, all ear, all intellect; undivided and 
unmoved himself, he yet moves and rules all things by his 
thought.”’ # 

Socrates and Plato represent the highest product of heathen 
civilisation and of Greek culture both in their characters and 
in their philosophic and religious faith. The origin and gov- 
ernment of the world these profound thinkers referred to a 
_ supreme Intelligence who was personal and possessed of moral 
attributes, but under this supreme over-lord there were in- 
ferior deities, “gods many and lords many.’ So that with 
all their high ideas in the realm of philosophy and their high 
ideals in the realm of ethics they must be classed as polythe- 
ists. Socrates followed an inward call from the gods in 
choosing his work, and prayed that the gods would give him 
those things which in their sight were good, for they alone, 

he said, were competent judges of good and ill. “Let us 


1 See Ueberwag’s ‘History of Philosophy,” Vol. I, p. 51. 


88 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


begin,” said Plato, “by asking whether all this which men call 
the universe is left to the guidance of an irrational and ran- 
dom chance, or, on the contrary, as our fathers declared, is 
ordered and governed by a marvellous Intelligence and wis- 
dom.” He followed his great teacher in believing that under 
the moral government of God, both in this life and in the 
future life, the good will be rewarded and the evil will be 
punished. 

Next to Plato and Socrates came the Stoics as representa- 
tives of the highest that ancient heathen civilisation accom- 
plished in ethical ideals; for they were more famed for their 
ethical than for their religious ideals. They recognised Zeus 
as supreme, but he was identified now with Deity as the imma- 
nent, creative force in matter, now with the all-ruling and 
immutable laws of nature, now with Providence, now with 
Destiny, and now with Fate. “As to the personality of the 
minor gods the old Stoics were vacillating; now they are 
spoken of as functions of nature and now again as persons.”’ 
Dr. Menzies in his “History of Religions” defines Zeus as a 
“kind of Providence in whom a man may trust when he does 
right, and to all of whose dispensations it behooves him humbly 
to submit.” 

The religious faith of the Stoics reaches perhaps its high- 
est expression in the famous “Hymn to Zeus” by Cleanthes, 
a Greek Stoic philosopher and poet, who lived in Asia Minor 
about three centuries before the Christian era. This hymn of 
Cleanthes to Zeus has been called “the perfection of Stoic 
prayers” and the most perfect expression of Stoic faith in 
Providence anywhere to be found :— 


“OQ Zeus, above all gods most glorious, invoked by many a 
name, almighty, evermore, who didst found the world and 
guidest all by law, all hail! for it is right that all mortals 
address thee. We are thine offspring, alone of mortal things 
that live and walk the earth moulded in image of the All; 
therefore, thee will I hymn and thy might will I celebrate in 
song continually. Thee doth all this system that rolls around 
the earth obey in whatsoever path thou guidest it, and wil- 


RELIGION AND RELIGIONS 89 


lingly is it governed by thee. Without thee, O Divine Being, 
no deed is done on earth, nor in the ethereal vault of heaven, 
nor in the deep, save only what wicked men do in the folly 
of their hearts. Nay more, what is uneven thy skill doth make 
even; what knew not order, it settled in order; and things that 
strive all find in thee a friend. For thus hast thou fitted all, 
evil with good, in one great whole, so that in all things reigns 
one reason eternally.” 


ITT 
Vitali NAD ESO TRUTH sINeReELIGION 


But one needs only to study and compare the results of 
heathen religions with those of the Christian religion in the 
matter of their influence and effects on the culture and char- 
acter of peoples and nations to determine which among the 
religions of the world is God’s chosen and elect religious 
agency for the elevation of the human race and the progress 
of mankind in all the things that make life worth living, and 
worth living, not for a day only, but forever. 


1. A Question of Ethics 


That is the truest and noblest religion that has the greatest 
power to make manhood. A profound and philosophical stu- 
dent of the worid’s great religions has made a keen analysis of 
the effect of these different religions on personality and it 
yields: these results: Buddhism with its pessimism paralyses 
personality; Confucianism with its ancestral worship and un- 
due reverence for the past impoverishes personality ; Hinduism 
with its arbitrary and inexorable customs of caste belittles and 
degrades personality; Mohammedanism, depending upon 
sensuality and the sword for its propagation, debases and 
enslaves personality. Christianity is the one and only religion 
of the world that emphasises and magnifies, that exalts and 
ennobles personality and character above everything else in 
life. Without the religion of the Old Testament the religion 
of the New Testament would not and could not have been. — 
We are not unmindful of the high mission of the Hebrew reli- 


90 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


gion and the rich contribution it made to personality, when 
we say that, however great this was, it is yet true that it was 
Christ who discovered and revealed to the world the true 
intrinsic value of manhood, apart from possessions or position. 
James Russell Lowell, calling attention to this fact, designated 
Christ as “The first true democrat that ever breathed.” 

And in like manner Christ has brought to the world the only 
true doctrine of the brotherhood of man which has ever been 
taught. Max Miller is our authority for saying that the word 
“mankind” never fell from the lips of Socrates or Plato or 
Aristotle. ‘‘Where the Greeks saw barbarians we see brethren; 
where the Greeks saw nations we see mankind.” Lecky, the 
historian, has said of Christianity that while it has ever been 
favourable to the cultivation of patriotic and national feeling, 
it has yet “infused into Christendom a bond of unity which is 
superior to the divisions of nationhood.” Hugo Grotius, the 
great jurist of Holland, who has been not improperly called 
the father of the modern science of international law, was a 
Christian commentator and theologian who studied much at 
the feet of Christ and derived his inspiration from him. 
In reviewing one of Grotius’s works on this subject Edward 
Everett took occasion to remark that “The foundations of his 
immortal treatise on the law of nations are laid in the Scrip- 
tures of the Old and New Testaments, and the original con- 
ception of the work was in the genuine spirit of Christian 
philanthropy.” ‘The hope of human brotherhood and perpetual 
peace among the nations of the earth is in the practice of such 
international ethical ideals as find expression in the life and 
teachings of Jesus Christ. It is in the supremely ethical re- 
ligion that bears his name that we find the only adequate 
and satisfactory answer to the question, “What is religion?” 

The best classification of religion, says Dr. Gwatkin, is by 
the value assigned to the individual. “In religions of mass, as 
Hegel called them, the individual is lost in tne society; in 
religions of individuality, society exists for the individual; 
while Christianity as the one religion of spirit proclaims at 
once the supreme value of the individual and the need of 
society to bring him to perfection. This division answers 


RELIGION AND RELIGIONS 91 


to the historical development of religion generally. First 
came the objective religions, then the subjective, then those 
that strive to reconcile in a higher unity the ideas of both. 
It is the same within the limits of Christianity. First 
came the Catholic systems, where man was made for the 
Church; then the Protestant in which the Church was made for 
man; and now we are feeling after something that shall give 
a real value to the Church consistent with the supreme value 
of the individual.’’ * 


2. Error Mixed with Truth in Heathen Religions. 


It needs, however, to be stated that such expressions of 
faith in Providence as those found in the prayers of Nebuchad- 
nezzar and Cleanthes and in the writings of Socrates and 
Plato are altogether exceptional and represent heathenism at 
its very best. Asa rule the prayers of the heathen, as found 
in all the religions of the world, show that whatever flicker- 
ing faith the people had in Providence had reference simply 
to some vague, occult and invisible power or spirit that might 
bring them things material, blessings purely physical. Heath- 
enism is truly, as Dr. Dorner has said, “religion run wild,” 
and much of it is religion run mad. It is only because we feel 
that any religion that is an honest expression of the religious 
instinct and of man’s groping after God is better than no 
religion at all, that we can feel that most of the religions of the 
heathen world can be given a place among the providential 
agencies through which God works in and upon the human 
tace. In studying them one and all in their entirety, we are 
‘impressed with their gross errors more than with their ele- 
Mments of truth, with their misconceptions and utterly inade- 
quate interpretations and explanations of things divine and 
human more than with conceptions and interpretations that 
are helpful and satisfying to rational beings. God’s Provi- 
dence has utilised in times past very faulty and imperfect men 
when no better instruments were available, and in like man- 
ner he may have used in time past, and may be using to-day, 
faulty and erroneous religions whenever and wherever the 


1“Knowledge of God,” Vol. I, pp. 296-7. 


92 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


true religion may not be available to satisfy men’s religious 
needs. 

After all has been said in recognition of the probable sin- 
cerity and honesty of the heathen gropings after God, an 
examination of the non-Christian religions of the world will 
reveal the fact that if the multitudinous and discordant con- 
ceptions of God that are found in them be under considera- 
tion, it is more fitting, at least in the case of most of them, 
that we should ask “What is God?” than that we inquire, 
“Who is God?” With many of these religions, God is im- 
personal, a thing rather than a person, and should be referred 
to by the neuter pronoun “It” rather than by the personal 
pronoun “He.” There can be no better preparation for an 
appreciative consideration of the Christian religion, with a 
view to estimating its moral value to the human race in and 
through its rational and soul-satisfying conception of God, 
than to make a careful and comprehensive study both of the 
heathen religions of the world with reference to their varying 
conceptions of God and of modern anti-theistic substitutes for 
religion and for God. Max Muller, the great scholar and 
student of the ancient literatures and religions of the East, 
remarked after finishing his extended studies that one needs 
to do what he had done to fully appreciate the words of the 
apostle Paul to the Romans: “I am not ashamed of the Gos- 
pel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation’’—and 
it alone is of all religions the wisdom and power of God ade- 
quate to meet man’s religious needs. How utterly inadequate 
they, one and all, are to meet these spiritual needs will appear 
to every one who can make even a brief survey of their concep- 
tions, or rather, their misconceptions, of God. 


3. The Ethical and Spiritual Religion of Christ 


But the history of religion and of civilisation shows that 
men may become better than their gods; and, when they do, 
they become first critics of the prevalent conceptions and 
definitions of deity, and then, unless the gods are reinterpreted 
in nobler terms and higher ideals, they are discredited, de- 
throned and discarded. The natural tendency and result of 


RELIGION AND RELIGIONS 93 


placing a higher conception of God side by side with a lower 
is to lead thoughtful people to abandon the lower and accept 
instead the higher conception. In this fact lies the hope and 
the inspiration of Christian missions. People who outgrow 
and discard their gods, because they have no higher conception 
of Deity to come in and meet their needs may become for a 
time agnostics and atheists; but such a no-faith in God is 
abnormal and cannot abide, because man is by nature a reli- 
gious being, and he can never find rest until he finds it in 
God. Towards faith in some kind of a god man is always 
travelling. In the heathen conceptions of God men’s hearts 
are at best but poorly and partially satisfied. Not until God 
is known as the Christian religion reveals him as a personal 
and ethical Being, as a holy and loving Father, are the souls 
of men fully and permanently satisfied. The paths that we 
shall travel all lead to the God and Father revealed to men by 
Jesus Christ in his person, in his teachings and his life. 

_. If ever a religion has appeared among men that can claim 
to embody all truth, it is the Christian Religion. It has now 
come to pass that by it all other religions in the world are 
judged. If the facts and arguments presented in this volume, 
and the conclusions deduced therefrom, prove anything, they 
‘prove the incomparable superiority of the Christian religion 
over all other religions that have appeared among men. 

_ Inclosing this chapter on “Religion and Religions,” in which 
we have recognised that some elements of truth may be found 
in all religions, but have found satisfaction only in the one 
teligion that bears “the name that is above every name,” there 
come to us the words with which Auguste Sabatier, the most 
distinguished of French Protestant theologians, closes the 
fourth chapter of his “Outline of a Philosophy of Religion,” 
and they are words eminently fitting to quote here: 


“A few years ago there assembled in Chicago what the 
Americans called the Parliament of Religions. The official 
Tepresentatives of all the principal religions of the new world 
and the old met together under a common feeling of religious 
brotherhood. They did not discuss the value of their rites 


94 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


or dogmas: their object was to approach each other, to edify 
each other, and, for the first time in the world’s history, to 
present the spectacle of a universal religious communion. When 
it came to the point, three things became clear: first, the com- 
mon name under which they were able to call upon God—the 
Father. Secondly, the Lord’s Prayer was adopted and recited 
by all. Thirdly, Christ himself, apart from all theological 
definition, was unanimously recognised and venerated as 
the Master and Initiator of the higher religious life. 

“In my own consciousness this practical demonstration is 
completed. I can hardly help being religious; but if I am 
seriously to be religious I can only be so under the Christian 
form. I can hardly help praying; but if I desire to pray, if 
moral anguish or intellectual doubt constrain me to seek some 
form of prayer that I can use in all sincerity, I never find but 
these words: ‘Our Father who art in heaven’ Lastly, I may 
disdain the inner life of the soul, and divert myself from it 
by the distractions of science, art and social life; but if, 
wearied by the world of pleasure or of toil, I wish to find my 
soul again and live a deeper life, I can accept no other guide 
and master than Jesus Christ, because in him alone optimism 
is without frivolity and seriousness is without despair.” 


CHAPTER FourR 
THROUGH NATURE TO GOD 








CuaptTer Four 
THROUGH NATURE TO GOD 


And Nature, the old Nurse, took 
The child upon her knee, 
Saying, “Here is a story-book 
Thy Father has written for thee. 
Come, wander with me,” she said, 
“Into regions yet untrod, 
And read what is yet unread 
In the manuscripts of God.” + 


In answering the question, who and what and where is 
God, by defining him as a personal, omnipresent Spirit, and the 
_ only Being, or form of being, that has existed from all eter- 
nity, we found it most reasonable to conceive of him as the 
Creator and source of all other forms of existence in the 
universe other than himself. The creaturely world that comes 
from him, and of which we are a conscious part, embraces 
two distinct forms of existence that we call spirit and matter. 
Both of these unite in man, a conscious spirit and a physical 
body. There are beings, the Scriptures tell us, that are purely 
spiritual and that have no connection with physical bodies, 
but we know so little of these angelic beings that they will 
not enter into our present study. 


I 
WHAT IS NATURE? 


Taking the universe as we find it, we may conveniently 
divide it into three orders or types of creaturely existence: 
first, the inorganic inanimate physical universe which is con- 
served and regulated or governed by God according to certain 

1 These beautiful lines were written by Longfellow on the fiftieth birth- 


day of Agassiz. : 
97 


98 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


uniform principles called the laws of nature; secondly, animate 
existence including the vegetable and animal world, over which 
the Creator exercises such providential care as is necessary 
to sustain the life that he created; and thirdly, rational crea- 
tures, those beings who possess, in addition to material bodies 
and physical life, an intellectual and spiritual nature, and moral 
free-agency. “Nature,” as we use the term in this chapter 
on “Through Nature to God,’”’ embraces the first two of these 
forms of creaturely existence, but not the third, which we shall 
consider separately in a later chapter which may be appro- 
priately titled “Through Man to God.” All forms of animate 
and inanimate existence lower than man have a place in the 
created universe not for their own sake and because of their 
own worth so much as because of their relation to man and 
for the purpose of ministering to him who alone of the three 
is rational, moral and spiritual. Nevertheless, because the 
physical exists to minister to the higher intellectual and rational 
order of beings, the lower forms of existence are permeated 
with the mind of their Creator in that they carry within 
themselves the evidences of their dependence upon the divine 
Being both for their origin and their continuance in existence. 
Because of this fact, nature is a pathway to God and we can 
travel through nature to nature’s God. 

That physical nature both animate and inanimate carries 
within itself evidences that prove the existence of a divine 
Creator and Preserver has been recognised ever since the mind 
of man has engaged in thinking and reasoning. Whether the 
evidence that nature furnishes is sufficient to demonstrate 
to a certainty to all men, or to any man, the existence of a 
divine Being may be questioned, but the history of human 
thought, whether in the form of philosophy or of theology, 
furnishes abundant evidence that whenever and wherever men 
have engaged in thinking and have made a record of their 
thoughts, they have travelled in thought from and through 
nature to nature’s God. Indeed we may safely say that such 
is the nature of the human mind, that thinking men, looking 
upon the visible world around them, cannot fail to reason from 
nature up to the Power or divine Source from which nature 


THROUGH NATURE TO GOD 99 


came. The microscope in one direction and the telescope in 
another have enriched and enlarged immensely the study of 
nature in our day, revealing worlds infinitesimal within worlds, 
—atoms within atoms and cells within cells—and worlds be- 
yond worlds, so marvellous and complex, and yet all, from the 
smallest to the greatest, so orderly and completely organised 
in each separate detail that it is inconceivable that it has all 
come into existence by chance, without any originating and 
directing Mind back of it and over it, and that it continues 
in operation from age to age without any supervising In- 
telligence. 


II 
THE INORGANIC WORLD 


1. The Physical Universe 


The three great fundamental entities of the physical uni- 
verse, according to science, are matter, ether and energy. 
“Matter and ether are receptacles or vehicles of energy;”’ but 
what these entities really are is a subject of speculation among 
scientists. Some scientists do not believe in the existence of 
ether at all as an “entity,” while others believe that it is an 
“entity” pervading all space and all matter. If matter, how- 
ever, be defined in general terms as anything and everything 
that exists in infinite space that is not spirit, then ether is not 
to be distinguished from matter any more than the air that 
envelops our planet is, but is simply a subtle form of matter 
that so pervades all space and so coexists with all other forms 
of matter in space that there can be no space in the universe 
where ether is not. As no particle of matter, however small, 
can either come into existence or be destroyed, and as there 
is no such thing as empty space devoid of “ethereal” matter, 
so there is, scientists tell us, no such thing as rest. “Every 
particle that goes to make up our solid earth is in a state of 
perpetual, unremitting vibration; energy is the universal com- 
modity on which all life depends.” Energy is that “other 
something” that is found wherever matter is which not only 


100 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


“makes the world go round” but which is making—so modern 
science teaches—everything else in the material world to move, 
from the tiniest of the atoms that make up molecules to the 
greatest of worlds in the heavenly spaces. 

Our study of physical nature is bounded by two extremes, 
represented (1) by the infinitely great as found in the heavenly 
bodies, the size, numbers and distances of which surpass the 
powers of the human mind to conceive or even to imagine; 
and (2) by the infinitesimally minute as revealed by the mi- 
croscope in the scientific study of the elements and atoms that 
enter into physical nature and of the biological cells that enter 
into vegetable and animal life. Then between the two comes 
the familiar world in which we live. It is impossible to say 
which of the three is the most marvellous and impressive in 
nature, the infinitely great as revealed in the telescope or the 
infinitesimally small as revealed in the microscope, or the ob- 
jects, at once useful, beneficent and beautiful, that surround 
us and enter into our life. All three of them are pathways 
to God which were travelled long before the construction of 
telescopes and microscopes or the advent of modern science 
with its marvellous additions to man’s knowledge of well-nigh 
everything that enters into human life. 


2. What Is Matter? 


I have spoken of spirit and matter as the two distinct things, 
or substances, or forms of being, that exist in our world. 
What now, let us ask, is matter? We have answered, or are 
supposed to have answered in part at least, the question as 
to spirit in a previous chapter, seeing that finite spirit was 
described in defining God as the one personal, divine and 
eternal Spirit who possesses certain given attributes not predi- 
cable of matter and who created man in his own image and 
put him in possession of his own attributes as far as the 
attributes of an infinite Being could be imparted to a finite 
creature. The human spirit will be the subject of further 
study in the chapter titled “Through Man to God.” But the 
other question must now be raised, and the attempt made to 
define “matter” or at least to state what we mean by the word © 


THROUGH NATURE TO GOD 701 


when we use it. It may be that the attempt to define matter 
and physical life, as also to define spirit, will reveal how much 
we do not know rather than what we do know. 

Ever since men began to think things through, to look 
through the surface and shows of things into the essence of 
things, they have been asking what is matter. While the 
nature of matter is still a hidden secret and a subject of 
speculation in our day as truly as it was in the days of the 
ancient Greek philosophers, the studies and experiments of 
physicists and chemists in the last half century have added 
more to our knowledge of matter and its properties than had 
been gained from all previous study and investigation. 

The studies and experiments of scientists have revealed the 
fact that there are ninety-two * different “elements” that enter 
into the constitution of our earth. Ninety-nine per cent of 
what we call the crust of the earth, however, is made out of 
only twenty of these elements. Indeed three fourths of the 


-earth’s visible crust is made up of only two elements, oxygen 


and silicon, three eighths being oxygen. 


3. What Are Atoms, Molecules, Radiant-matter and 
Electrons? 


Matter is composed of minute particles called atoms. The 
word “atom” means etymologically something that cannot be 
cut or further divided, being composed of two Greek words, 
“a,” negative, and ‘“‘temnein” to cut. When material sub- 
stances are divided and subdivided until the last possible divi- 
sion has been reached, and matter is thus reduced to its primary 
and ultimate units, these indivisible physical units are called 
“atoms.”’ An atom is too small to be visible even by the aid 
of the most powerful microscope that the ingenuity of man 
has been able to construct. But although atoms are invisible 
they can be weighed and measured. What was once consid- 
ered to be an indivisible atom has been further divided by 
modern scientific analysis, so that there are atoms within 
atoms. An atom has been described as “a particle of matter 


1 Scientific writers differ among themselves as to the number of “elements” 
so far discovered; many still say “eighty-two.” 


102 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


which is a million times smaller than the breadth of a hair.” 
Atoms of different elementary substances differ greatly from 
each other in size and weight. Some atoms are so small, 
Professor Thomson tells us, that “it would take four hundred 
million of them, arranged in a straight line, to cover one inch 
of space. It takes a quintillion atoms of gold to weigh a single 
gramme. Five million atoms of helium could be placed in a 
line across the diameter of a full stop like that at the end of 
this sentence.” And yet we are now told that atoms are far 
from being the last reducible unit of matter, but that each 
and every atom is composed of lesser particles called electrons 
which are in ceaseless and incredibly rapid motion, and that 
atoms are shown by means of the X-ray and radium to be 
continually shooting off from themselves these constituent 
electrons as radiant matter, comparable to electric sparks.’ 
The fact that the atom of one chemical element may combine 
with one or more atoms of another element makes possible 
the many different kinds of matter found in nature. Thus, 
if we combine one atom of oxygen and two atoms of hydro- 
gen we have water, which constitutes 70 per cent of all living 
matter. All combinations of the elements of nature represent 
a chemical process or change by which a substance is produced 
which is totally distinct from each and every one of its in- 
gredients. The number of substances or things in the world 
that have been made or may be made out of different combi- 
nations of the fiinety-two chemical elements is incalculably 
great. 

Atoms have been compared to the bricks out of which a 
building is constructed and called the bricks of the material 
universe. But single atoms are not supposed to exist separate 
and apart from each other. Atoms come together in groups 
or aggregations that make what we call molecules. The fol- 
lowing statements reveal the nature and characteristics of 
molecules and show how large a place they fill among the won- 


1 The reader is referred to Thomson’s “Outline of Science” for a full 
presentation of the new conception of atoms and electrons as radiant 
matter, and for information in popular form concerning other matters of 
scientific interest. 


THROUGH NATURE TO GOD 103 


ders of the world we live in:—‘Molecules are composed of 
at least two or more atoms and constitute the smallest par- 
ticles of matter or aggregations of atoms that are available 
for scientific study and experiment. In liquids the molecules 
hang together loosely; in solids they cohere firmly; in gases 
they are in a more or less violent state of commotion and 
form no union with each other. But the very hardest of 
solids are really more like lattice work or sponges than like 
solids, as that word is popularly understood. For example, 
if a bar of solid gold is placed in a little pool of mercury, 
the gold will take in the mercury between its molecules as if 
it were porous like a sponge. A grain of gold has been beaten 
out into a thin leaf that covered seventy-five inches square, 
and it was a thousand times thinner than the paper on which 
these words are printed. The wall of an inflated soap-bubble 
is less than three millionths of an inch in thickness, and, thin 
as that is, it is over fifteen times as thick as the thinnest film 
of oil that has been poured upon the surface of water. And 
yet that gold leaf, and wall of the soap bubble and film of 
oil, at their thinnest points, are composed of at least two 
molecules—which means that a molecule of oil is less than one 
hundred millionth of an inch in diameter. 
“In a single cubic centimetre of air—a globule about the 
size of a small marble—there are thirty million trillion 
molecules. Each molecule of air which seems so still in the 
house on a sultry summer afternoon is really travelling faster, 
as we inhale it into our lungs, than a bullet is travelling when 
fired from the barrel of a rifle. And every single molecule 
of air that crowds the atmosphere in which we live and move 
collides with another and different molecule twenty thousand 
times in every inch of space through which it moves, and 
is turned from its course by these collisions five billion times 
every second. If the molecules of argon (the colourless, 
odourless, gaseous element found in the air) which are con- 
tained in less than one half of a cubic inch, could be placed 
end to end, it would make a line long enough to extend around 
the circumference of the earth two hundred times,—in other 


104 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


words a line five million miles long. Or, to put it differently, 
in a centimetre of air (a otal about the size of a small 
marble) there are thirty maittionl trillion molecules.”’ * 

We have previously defined matter in terms of elements, 
atoms and molecules. But the most wonderful thing about 
matter and its atoms remains yet to be told. The discovery 
of radium with its remarkable properties, and of the X-ray, 
and radiant-matter as the material of which atoms ‘are com- 
posed, has revolutionised the conception of matter hitherto 
held by scientists. Although scientists do not all write alike 
in presenting the new view of matter, and differ in some re- 
spects as to the nature of atoms and electrons, they are in 
agreement in no longer considering matter, as they once did, 
as “‘very minute particles of solid substance such as wax or 
carbon, but now regard it as a form of physical energy, seeing 
that the electrons that compose the atoms are moving and 
revolving within the atoms with incredible speed.” Accord- 
ing to the,new view every atom of matter of whatever kind 
throughout the whole universe is built up of electrons in con- 
junction with a nucleus, and “consists of groups of corpuscles 
revolving in concentric rings or spheres and arranging them- 
selves in such rings, according to their number and speed.” A 
scientific writer in a recent number of the Popular Science 
monthly declares that on this new conception of atoms as 
radiant-matter and electrons well nigh all the hitherto obscure 
phenomena of atoms can be satisfactorily explained. 


4. What Is Energy? 


“Energy has come to be known,” says Professor J. Arthur 
Thomson, “as something quite as distinct and permanent as 
matter itself. As it is humanly impossible to create or destroy 
a particle of matter, so it is impossible to create or to destroy 
energy. If energy disappears in one form, it reappears in 
another. And we may add that, just as we are ignorant of 
what the negative and positive particles of electricity which 


1 See Thomson’s “Outline of Science.” It is of the highest importance 
that we present all such inconceivable statements of scientific facts in the 
exact language of scientists themselves. 


THROUGH NATURE TO GOD 105 


constitute matter really are, so we are ignorant of the true 
mature of; energy..." 

But, ignorant as we are of the “true nature of energy,” 
there is no conception so necessary to the modern idea of 
nature,—so writes Dr. Fairbairn,—as that of energy, for with- 
out it no change and no continuity would be possible. “‘With- 
out it nature would be simply an inert, unmoved, unmovable 
mass of matter.”’ Energy is the cause of all physical changes. 
The conservation and indestructibility of energy in nature and 
the correlation and convertibility of the forces of nature into 
different modes of motion constitute the cause and the ex- 
planation both of that which is permanent and persistent and 
that which is mutable and transmissible in nature. Energy is 
held to be “constant in quantity, indestructible and persistent 
in essence, but infinitely varied in mode; while ever changing 
its form, it yet never ceases to be capable at once of a permu- 
tation which knows no rest and a continuance which knows 


‘no break.” 


But the conception of energy is an idea which we arrive 
at only in and through experience. This means that we de- 


_ rive the notion of energy from our own conscious possession 


of free power within and our experience in producing definite 


and desired results in the physical world without by the con- 
' scious exercise of this power of free will within. And this 
in turn means that the idea of causation in nature is a clear 


if not a necessary deduction from Will. In other words a 
necessitated being,—a being who had, and could have, no 
experience in producing results in the world without by the 


conscious exercise of free will within—could not form or con- 


ceive the notion of energy. When we speak of energy, there- 
fore, and attempt to explain matter through it, what are we 


doing but interpreting nature in terms of Will—of free will 
_ that has no intelligible meaning apart from Personality—thus 
using what is given in the consciousness within as the key 
_ with which we open the mysteries and reveal the realities which 
_ exist without? We thus reach the conclusion that energy in 
nature is the correlate of freedom in man; and in as much as 


1“Outline of Science,” p. 282. 


106 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


man, were he not free and conscious of power, could have no 
conception of energy, the fact of energy in nature to the 
extent that it is coextensive with the physical universe, 
carries along with it the necessary implication that there must 
be a Free Will, the free will of a Person, that can account 
for and produce the energy of the universe. Energy, thus, 
even more than matter, becomes a pathway that leads to God.* 


Ill 
THE ORGANIC WORLD 


Surely all this marvellous arrangement of atoms and this 
orderly operation of nature’s laws cannot exist simply for 
their own sake. That is unthinkable. Let us turn now from 
the inorganic and lifeless world to the organic world of life; 
and see if we cannot find in the organic world the explanation 
and raison d’étre of the inorganic. 


1. Whence Comes Life? 


Proceeding then yet further in our study of nature, we 
find something more significant and wonderful than mere 
physical existence. We find life, and life in nature demands 
not only a living Cause but a life-giving Cause as the only 
adequate rational explanation of its origin. 

The material universe in its inorganic form, considered 
apart from the presence of life, calls for God as the only ade- 
quate cause to account for its existence, its attributes and its 
orderly motion; but the presence of life here increases a hun- 
dredfold the rational necessity for assuming the existence of 
a living God in order to account for nature, teeming with 
life as it is on our planet. Science teaches that this planet 
and all other parts of the material universe were once in a 
molten and even gaseous state; were nothing but star dust and 
fire mist, in which a seed or germ of life could no more exist 
than it can exist in the molten lava of the volcano. How did 
life ever originate here? Whence came the first seed of vege- 


1 See Fairbairn’s “Philosophy of the Christian Religion,” pp. 34-35. 


THROUGH NATURE TO GOD 107 


table life, and whence the first egg or embryo of animal life? 
The Scriptures answer that “in the beginning God created it’’ 
—different forms in successive days. Science answers that it 
came by evolution, but that does not answer the question as 
to its origin. That could only answer the question as to how 
it came, not whence it first came. Life 1s something more 
than matter, different from matter, and higher than matter. 
If the lower (matter and its properties) demands a personal 
Creator to account for it, a fortiort, how much more does the 
higher (life and its attributes) demand a God to account for it. 
Seeing, then, that nature as we know it abounds in life— 
vegetable, animal, and rational life—it follows that, with the 
first sign of life in nature, there arises a new and profounder 
necessity than has hitherto appeared for declaring that there 
must be a Being capable of originating life in a hitherto life- 
less universe. “The rocks beneath our feet attest that our 
planet was not always as it is now; that animals existed long 
before man; that the lower forms of animal life are earlier 
than the higher; and that our planet was once destitute of even 
the lowest forms of life. So far as is known to science, all 
life is derived from pre-existing life. And the known forces 
of nature as we see them operating are altogether inadequate 
in and of themselves either to produce out of inorganic matter 
the mysterious chemical compounds which make up living 
bodies, or to form them into organic cells, or to endow them 
with the functions of life. In other words, in the observed 
order of the universe, the forces of material nature never 
bridge over the interval between the lifeless and the living, 
_and seem utterly incapable of doing so. The presence of life, 
therefore, as we now see it, in what was once a lifeless world, 
reveals unmistakably a Power infinitely greater than the forces 
observed in nature.” 
_ Linneus, the great botanist, once said, after watching the 
unfolding of a blossom: “I saw God in his glory passing near 
_me, and bowed my head in worship.” The sight of the little 
flower in the crannied wall evoked from Tennyson the same 
reverential sense of the Divine Presence: 


108 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


“Flower in the crannied wall, 

I pluck you out of the crannies, 

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
Little flower—but if I could understand, 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 

I should know what God and man is.” 


2. Interrelations of Living Things 


It is important for us to recognise the fact that all things 
in this world of ours are so related to each other and so inter- 
woven are their laws and forces in contributing to each other 
and depending upon each other for the fulfilment of the ends 
and functions of their being that they constitute one great 
family in a complex “web of life.’’ Nature, organic and in- 
organic, and life, physical, vegetable, animal and human all 
constitute one great whole and can be understood and rightly 
interpreted only when studied in their common unity as well 
as in their separate individuality. This is both the scientific 
and the religious way of looking at things. To illustrate how 
flowers and insects are related to each other, Mr. Darwin once 
told a “Cats and Clover story” which when published soon 
spread around the world. We condense it as it was repro- 
duced and published. 


“Around a hundred heads of the purple clover Darwin placed 
muslin bags in such a manner that the air and the sunlight 
got in freely, but all insects were shut out. From these hun- 
dred heads of clover that had no insect visitors he failed to 
secure a single real seed, while from another hundred heads 
near by to which the bees and other insects had access, he 
obtained twenty-seven thousand good seeds, an average of 
two hundred and seventy seeds to each head. These latter 
heads had been visited by the bumble-bees which resulted in the 
cross-fertilisation of the clover. Hence, the more bumble-bees 
the better next year’s crop of clover. But the field-mice are 
fond of bumble-bees and invade their nests and devour them. 
Therefore, the more field-mice the fewer bumble-bees, and the 
poorer next year’s clover crop. But in the neighbourhood of | 
villages there are fewer field-mice than in the open country, 
and this because the cats that abound in the village hunt them 


THROUGH NATURE TO GOD 109 


and kill them, though they do not eat them. Therefore, the 
more cats the fewer field-mice, and the fewer field-mice, the 
more bumble-bees, and the more bumble-bees the better next 
year’s crop of clover. The more clover the richer pasture for 
cattle, and the more cattle the more meat and milk and butter 
for man. The more cat-loving children and cat-protecting old 
ladies there are in the village, the more cats there will be and 
this will mean more clover. Thus it is that cats and clover 
and cattle and children and commerce and civilisation are all 
woven together in the web of life.” 


When Isaiah said, “All flesh is grass . . . surely the people 
is grass,’ he was uttering a truth of deeper significance than 
he perhaps knew. Vegetable life is the basis of well-nigh all 
the life on our planet. When Job calls man a worm of the 
dust and Micah compares his movements in the world to worms 
coming out of their holes in the earth, we feel that man is 
being likened unto one of the most useless and despicable 
forms of animal existence. And yet naturalists tell us that the 
vegetation of the world and the sustenance of all animal life 
depends in no small degree upon the work of this lowly and 
repellent creature. How few of us recognise the fact that 
“there are,’ to quote the words of a naturalist, “from fifty 
thousand to five hundred thousand earthworms at work in 
every acre of soil, the number depending upon the character 
of the soil. On an average these lowly creatures pass ten 
tons of earth per acre through their bodies in a year. The 
plough is one of man’s most useful inventions; but long be- 
fore man or his plough were in existence, the earthworms 
were at work ploughing the soil and preparing it for the rain 
to soak in and produce vegetation.”’ An eminent English nat- 
uralist, Gilbert White, wrote in appreciation of the great con- 
tribution which these humble ‘“‘children of the soil’ have made 
to the progress of the world, as follows: ‘“Earthworms, though 
in appearance a small and despicable link in the chain of nature, 
are the great promoters of vegetation. This service they ren- 
der by boring, perforating, and loosening the soil, and render- 
ing it pervious to rains and the fibres of plants, by drawing 
straws and stalks into the soil; and most of all by throwing 


110 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


up such infinite numbers of lumps of earth. But for them the 
earth would soon become cold, hard-bound, and void of fer- 
mentation and consequently sterile.” In view of these facts 
we do not wonder that an even greater naturalist than Gilbert 
White—Charles Darwin—observes: “It may be doubted 
whether there are many other animals which have played so 
important a part in the history of the earth as have these lowly 
creatures.” 

The examples which we have here cited of the dependence 
of one form of life on another are taken with a view to 
showing that the very highest, man, is dependent for his well- 
being on the very lowest, the tiny insects that flit from flower 
to flower and the earthworms that are consigned to an even 
more lowly task and to a habitation devoid of everything which 
in the eyes of mankind makes life worth living. If the very 
lowest forms of life serve the highest, it follows that inter- 
vening living organisms whether great or small must fill some 
divine function in the organic world of living things and 
be a part of Nature’s great complex and correlated whole. 
The working of this law of interdependence among living 
things could be illustrated by innumerable examples taken from 
the higher ranks and forms of life, some of which will be 
presented later. 


IV 
THE APPEAL FROM NATURE TO NATURE’S GOD 


Can the human mind conceive of anything more impressive 
and astounding than the facts revealed by this marvellous in- 
sight into physical nature and its relation to vegetable and ani- 
mal life? From molecules to man; from radiant-matter to 
spirit; from electrons to volitions—what a complicated net- 
work! And yet the most perfect order and adaptation reign 
everywhere, while the lower everywhere ministers to the higher. 
How explain it all? There is but one answer :—These things 
are the marks of mind. Mind there must be somewhere. It is 
only a question as to where the mind that is so manifest in 
this wonderful and marvellous order of things is located. Is 


THROUGH NATURE TO GOD 111 


it most reasonable to locate it in the physical matter of the 
universe, or, following the analogy of this world and this life 
of ours, to locate it in personality, in a Personality whose 
powers are equal to the results seen? There can be but one 
answer to this question. 


1. The Analogy Between Human and Divine Workers 


Side by side with the objects of nature, in our world, are 
numerous objects which owe their forms of existence to the 
minds and handiwork of man. These works of men are due 
in varying degrees to the desire and thought and skill and 
patient toil of those who made them. But it matters not how 
great the products of human workmanship may be, it is always 
true that the worker is greater than his work. The architect 
and builder is greater than his building ; the author greater than 
his book; the poet greater than his poem; the musician and 
composer greater than his music, and the artist is greater than 
his picture. Must not the same thing be true in the material 
universe among the objects of nature. Must it not be true here 
just as among the works of man, that the worker is greater 
than his work? And if the works of nature be greater than 
the works of man, the Worker who made the objects of nature 
must be correspondingly greater than the greatest of human 
workers. “The splendour of nature, surpassing all that man 
can make and prompting his own best thoughts and works, 
proclaims that behind and above the material world is a Worker 
as much above nature as the artist is greater than his picture, 
and as much above man as the vast and glorious universe is 
greater than the noblest works of man.” * This most wonderful 
edifice which we inhabit, though it is but a tiny part of the 
material universe, bears ceaseless evidence to the wisdom and 
skill and power of the great Architect who planned and builded 
it and whose exhaustless energy maintains it in being. 

“Every house,” says the author of the Epistle to the He- 
brews, “is builded by some man, but he that built all things is 
God.” “That which may be known of God is manifest in and 
to the Gentiles,” says Paul in his Epistle to the Romans; “for 


1J. Ager Beet, “Manual of Theology,” p. 4. 


112 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of 
him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being 
understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power 
and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.”” So multitudi- 
nous are the evidences of mind and thought and purpose in 
nature, and so thoroughly do these evidences correspond with 
the mind and thought and purpose of man as seen in his 
handiworks of utility and art that the failure of the earth’s 
inhabitants to discern and acknowledge the hand of the Creator 
in the vast world of nature is attributable not to any lack of 
evidence but to moral causes, which fact leaves them without 
excuse for agnosticism and unbelief. Such is the thought of 
the great Apostle to the Gentiles. 


2. God in His Heavens 


Those who have sought and seen God in nature seem first 
of all and most of all to have discovered the signs of his 
presence in the heavens. The relation that exists between 
nature and its Creator has never been more beautifully ex- 
pressed than in the following words found in the beginning 
of the Nineteenth Psalm: 


“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament 
showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and 
night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor 
language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone 
out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the 
world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, which 
is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth 
as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the 
end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it; and 
there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.” 


These words of the Psalmist teach us that God is revealed in 
nature, and represent the revelation thus made of him as cease- 
less, going on day and night in all seasons, and as co-extensive 
with all races of men and with all parts of the earth. They 
declare, moreover, that nature speaks of God as its Creator in 
a language that all can hear and understand. The poetic para- 


THROUGH NATURE TO GOD 113 


phrase which Joseph Addison has made of the Psalmist’s lan- 
guage quoted above is admired and sung wherever the Christian 
faith and the English language have gone: 


The spacious firmament on high, 
With all the blue ethereal sky, 
And spangled heavens, a shining frame, 
Their great Original proclaim; 
' Th’ unwearied sun, from day to day 
Doth his Creator’s power display, 
And publishes to every land 
The work of an almighty hand. 


Soon as the evening shades prevail, 
The moon takes up the wondrous tale, 
And nightly to the list’ning earth 
Repeats the story of her birth; 

While all the stars that round her burn, 
And all the planets in their turn, 
Confirm the tidings as they roll, 

And spread the truth from pole to pole. 


What though, in solemn silence, all 
Move round the dark, terrestrial hall? 
What though no real voice nor sound 
Amid the radiant orbs be found? 

In reason’s ear they all rejoice, 

And utter forth a glorious voice 
Forever singing as they shine, 

“The hand that made us is divine.” 


So much of God did the Psalmist see as he looked in devout 
meditation at the heavenly bodies. There is perhaps nothing 
in the entire range of nature-poetry more striking and beauti- 
ful than this poetic description of the sun. And yet how little 
did the Psalmist know of the heavenly bodies in comparison 
with the humblest student of nature who is familiar with the 
contents of a modern book of astronomy. With the natural 
eye about seven thousand stars can be seen; more than ten 
times as many with an opera glass, and with the largest tele- 
Scope approximately a hundred million may be seen. 

If we compare our sun in size with the stars, says Professor 


114 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


J. Arthur Thomson,’ it must be called a small and insignificant 
body, physically considered. One of the stars, known as Betel- 
geux, has been measured, and has been found to have a diam-. 
eter three hundred times greater than that of our sun. The 
sun is 866,000 miles in diameter, a hundred times greater than 
that of our earth. Surrounding the sun is a silvery halo or 
atmosphere of silvery light called the corona which extends 
for millions of miles into space. The sun is over ninety-two 
million miles away from our earth, and as the earth moves 
in its orbit around the sun at the rate of a thousand miles a 
minute, six months from now we will be 185 million miles 
away from where we are at this moment. The nearest star 
to our earth is known as Alpha Centauri, and it is twenty- 
five million millions of miles away,—that is, nearly three mil- 
lion times as far away as our sun. Sirius, the brightest star 
in our firmament, is twice that distance, or five and a half mil- 
lion times as far away from us as our sun is. As a result of 
twenty years of work in this field, it is now known that the 
more distant stars of the Milky Way are at least a hundred 
thousand trillion miles away from our sun. Now light is 
known to travel at the rate of 186 thousand miles a second; and 
that means that if you could look through the Yerkes Observa- 
tory telescope to-night and see one of those more distant stars, 
the rays of light that come from it into your eye would have 
started on their long journey 25,000 years ago, or, if it will 
be more satisfactory and accurate to use Archbishop Usher’s 
chronology, approximately 19,000 years before, on the sixth 
day of Creation, the human race in the persons of Adam and 
Eve was started upon its checkered career. 

When we consider these and other like facts pertaining to 
the heavens, the words of the Psalmist found in the One Hun- 
dred and Forty-eighth Psalm, should mean more to us than 
they could possibly have meant to him who first uttered them 
and cannot seem inappropriate on the lips of any one who sees 
God in Nature: “Praise ye the Lord from the heavens; praise 
him in the heights. Praise ye him, sun and moon; praise 


x The statements in this paragraph are gathered from “The Outline of 
cience.” 


THROUGH NATURE TO GOD 115 


him, all ye stars of light. Praise him, ye heaven of heavens, 
and ye waters that be above the heavens. Let them praise 
the name of the Lord; for he commanded, and they were 
created.” 


3. God in His World 


Not only is our sun one of the smallest of the myriads of 
stars, but our earth is one of the smallest of the planets. Rea- 
soning from analogy we have good ground for believing that 
many, if not all, of the stars are suns surrounded by planetary 
systems similar to our own; but so distant are these other suns 
and so small relatively are the planets that belong to them it 
is quite impossible to see them even with the most powerful 
telescope. Nothing impresses a thoughtful student of the 
physical universe more deeply than the utter insignificance and 
absolute littleness of our earth as compared with the dimensions 
and immense distances of the other heavenly bodies. It is 
less relatively than a drop of water in the ocean or a grain of 
sand on the seashore. Our earth has been described as “a pin- 
point in the physical universe.”’ If we are to find anything 
significant, therefore, in our planet, it must be not in its size, 
but in its contents. 

Examining our earth, then, with a view to discovering in 
its contents its real and true significance, we find three things 
worthy of consideration and so profoundly significant as to 
suggest, if they do not require, dependence upon God for 
their origin and continued existence. These things are: (1) 
matter, with its elements, and minute atoms filled with their 
stores of energy; (2) life, vegetable and animal, with its 
minute cells and germs, and (3) spirit, that occupies no space 
but manifests itself in beings possessed of self-consciousness, 
mind, conscience, reason, personality, and other like attributes. 
The significance and wonders of our earth, then, must be 
sought not in that which is immense and great in size, but 
rather in things that are minute and small, some of them infint- 
tesimally small. The physical elements that enter into our 
earth are shared in common with the sun and the stars as has 
been abundantly proved, but in the study of life and spirit we 


116 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


are wholly dependent upon our earth; for the sun, moon and 
stars furnish us with no data. 

In studying the heavens we sought God in and through the 
infinite and the boundless, and saw him in the invisibly great. 
In studying matter with its minute molecules and atoms and 
electrons, we must needs seek him in and through the finite; 
and find him, if we may, in the invisibly little, in the infinites- 
imal in nature,—in material atoms and biological cells and 
life germs so minute that they are not only invisible even 
with the most powerful magnifying lens but their littleness 
passes human comprehension. But the incomprehensibly great 
and the incomprehensibly small both alike demand an incom- 
prehensibly infinite Intelligence and Power to account for and 
unite them—the infinitely great and the infinitesimally small— 
in one and the same universe of being. 


V 
A REASONABLE INFERENCE 


And thus it is that whether we look at the great star, Betel- 
geux, thirty thousand times larger than our earth, the greatest 
object man has ever beheld, or at the tiny invisible atom in 
the vibrant air, or at the unshapely little worm of the earth 
crawling at our feet, the lowliest of all creatures, we see God 
—1in the one case we see the symbol of his glory in the great 
things of heaven, and in the other the proof of his power 
and goodness in the little things of the earth. 


1. Either God or Chance 


One of our most widely known and popular American ora- 
tors, a devout believer.in God as the author of nature and in 
nature as a manifestation of the power and goodness of God, 
has expressed his faith in words that will appeal to all Chris- 
tian believers, even to those who do not share all of his views 
on matters of traditional theology and modern science: 


We see manifestations of God’s power in the ebb and flow of 
the tides; in the mighty “shoreless rivers of the ocean”; in the | 





THROUGH NATURE TO GOD 117 


suspended water in the clouds—billions of tons, seemingly defy- 
ing the law of gravitation while they await the command that 
sends them down in showers of blessings. We behold it in 
the lightning’s flash and the thunder’s roar; and in the in- 
visible germ of life that contains within itself the power to 
gather its nourishment from the earth and air, fulfil its mis- 
sion and propagate its kind. 

We see all about us, also, conclusive proofs of the infinite 
intelligence and fathomless love of the Heavenly Father. On 
lofty mountain summits he builds his mighty reservoirs and 
piles high the winter snows, which, melting, furnish the water 
for the singing brooks, for the hidden veins, and for the 
springs that pour out their refreshing flood through the smit- 
ten rocks. At his touch the same element that furnishes ice 
to cool the fevered brow furnishes also the steam to move 
man’s commerce on sea and land. He imprisons in roaring 
cataracts exhaustless energy for the service of man: he stores 
away in the bowels of the earth beds of coal and rivers of 
oil; he studs the canyon’s frowning walls with precious metals 
and priceless gems; he extends his magic wand, and the soil 
becomes rich with fertility; the early and latter rains supply 
the needed moisture, and the sun, with its marvellous alchemy, 
transmutes base clay into golden grain. He gives us in infinite 
variety the fruits of the orchard, the vegetables of the garden 
and the berries of the woods. He gives us the sturdy oak of 
the forest for timber and also the fruit-bearing tree and the 
graceful palm. 

In compassion he makes the horse to bear our burdens, 
and the cow to supply the dairy; and he gives us the faithful 
domestic fowl. He makes the fishes to scour the sea for sus- 
tenance and then yield themselves up as food for man. He 
sends the bee forth to gather sweets for us and birds to sing 
our cares away. He paints the skies with the grey of the 
morning and the glow of the sunset; he sets his radiant bow 
in the clouds and copies its colours in myriads of flowers. He 
gives to the babe a mother’s love, to the child a father’s care, 
to parents the joy of children, to brothers and sisters the 
sweet associations of the fireside, and he gives to each and 


118 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


all the friend that makes companionship sweet. Surely every- 
thing that hath breath should praise the Lord.* 


In these words we find metaphor and poetry and rhetoric 
on fire with faith and aglow with love, arraying the facts of 
nature and life in a cumulative argument sufficient, it would 
seem, to convince every man who is not blinded by prejudice 
and sensuality that things like these could not have come by 
chance. If these things could have come by chance, then every 
unbeliever would be justified in spelling chance with a capital 
C and worshipping it, as Frederick Emerson Brooks has said 
in one of his poems: 

If chance could fashion but a little flower, 
With perfume for each tiny thief, 

And furnish it with sunshine and with shower, 

Then chance would be Creator with the power 
To build a world for unbelief. 

But if these multitudinous blessings of nature do not come, 
and cannot come, by chance, then surely the least the recipient 
of these blessings can do is to seek and to find the real and true 
Source from which they do come—and, finding that they come 
from One who is all-loving, acknowledge the gift with feel- 
ings of gratitude and words of thanksgiving. 

In expressing sentiments like these we find theistic evolu- 
tionists and theistic anti-evolutionists in perfect accord. 


2. The Spiritual Interpretation of Nature 


One impulse from a vernal wood 
Will teach you more of man, 
Of moral evil and of good, 
Than all the sages can. 

Thus wrote William Wordsworth, the great poet of nature. 
“Every flower,” says Dr. Lyman Abbot, “is a new Creation. 
Every day God separates the waters that are under the firma- 
ment from the waters that are above the firmament; for he it 
is who daily and hourly lifts the clouds from their ocean bed 
and causes them to float in the air above. Every spring is a 
new creation, and God himself is the secret and the source 
and the center of all the life.” 

1W. J. Bryan, a free quotation from “In His Image.” 





THROUGH NATURE TO GOD 119 


When nature is thus interpreted, every bush of the desert 
is seen to be aflame with God. “The Bible,” says Dr. G. A. 
Johnston Ross, “has its own unique and comprehensive spirit- 
ual interpretation of nature and of our relation to it; its own 
explanation of the place of man in the natural world, of the 
sympathy existing between him and that nature of which he 
is a part and yet designed to be moral sovereign; of the pros- 
pect before nature through the medium of the moralisation 
of men and their rising to the stature of sons of God.”’ What- 
ever may be the defect of the Old Testament as compared 
with the New, it cannot be said to lack a proper recognition of 
the value of nature as a channel to faith in God. To com- 
mune with nature was for the Old Testament poets and proph- 
ets to worship God. 

And Christ’s spiritual interpretation of nature is a revela- 
tion both of himself, and of the God who gave nature not 
only physical but moral beauty. If Jesus was a ‘Man of Sor- 
_rows and acquainted with grief,” he was also a companion of 
nature, and acquainted with the quiet joy that such companion- 
ship always yields to devout souls. The Son of Man was the 
greatest of all interpreters of nature, and from his love and use 
of nature we should learn to love it and use it. 


“Life sang as well as sobbed for him. It was not in barren, 
priest-ridden Judea that Jesus was brought up and passed 
most of his life, but in fair, fertile, simple-hearted Galilee, 
where men lived near to nature. And afterwards, in the stress 
and heat of those burning years of his public ministry, how 
often did he turn aside to the restful lake shore, the quiet 
mountain side, the secluded garden, for refreshment and 
soothing and strength in communion with nature and through 
nature with the Father! Though neither botanist nor geolo- 
gist, biologist nor ornithologist, never was there such a nature- 
teacher as Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount and other dis- 
courses abound in spiritual lessons drawn from nature. No 
part of this sweet sermon which the summer winds of Galilee 
have wafted to us across the years is more dear to the heart 
of Christendom than that in which, with the swift seizure of 
a divine insight, Jesus unfolds the very heart of the scene about 


120 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


him in the words: ‘Behold the birds of the heaven, that they 
sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and yet 
your Heavenly Father feedeth them. . . . Consider the lilies 
of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin;, 
yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was 
not arrayed like one of these.’ Here is nature-teaching that 
has no parallel. So long as birds fly, this lesson will fly 
with them; so long as flowers bloom, this word will bloom 
in them. Nor does this passage stand alone. Throughout 
Jesus’s teaching run the roots of nature symbolism and anal- 
ogy, holding it fast to reality and supplying it with unfading 
verdure and moral beauty. On the purely scientific side of 
nature he did not touch; it was the moral, the spiritual inter- 
pretation of nature, as it stands related to the life of the soul, 
with which he was concerned. Here we may accept his word 
as final. And what is that word? It is that nature is God’s— 
full of his thought and of his love. Not even a sparrow, says 
Jesus, can fall to the ground ‘without your Father’—words 
these of infinite significance and tenderness, and of larger 
meaning than has ever yet been drawn from them. Few and 
simple as are the words of Jesus concerning the meaning of 
nature, the light which they throw upon nature will never 
cease to invest it with spiritual significance and moral beauty 
and make it, when rightly interpreted, a revelation of the 
Heavenly Father’s goodness and love.” * 


The author of the following beautiful lines, S. Hall Young, 
may have had in mind another interpreter of nature, but they 
seem most appropriate when applied to Christ, the only perfect 
interpreter at once of nature and nature’s God: 


He lived aloft, apart. He talked with God 
In all the myriad tongues of God’s sweet world; 
But still he came anear and talked with us, 
Interpreting for God to listening men. 


3. Through Things Beautiful to God 


There are some paths to God which so blend physical nature 
and human nature as to combine that which is highest and best 
in each. God is revealed in things beautiful in nature not less 


1“Christ and the Eternal Order,” by J. W. Buckham. 


THROUGH NATURE TO GOD 121 


than in that which is useful, and most things in nature com- 
bine the useful and the beautiful. God is the author of beauty, 
and in human art we are but imitating the divine Artist. God 
has made man to admire the beautiful and has made beautiful 
things to abound in the world for him to admire. God is the 
greatest of all artists, and it is his will that all things beautiful 
in nature should lead the beholder to adore him who asks of 
us, his children, that we worship him in the beauty of holiness. 
If with the eye of an artist we look upon the landscapes of 
our earth and see in their forms and colours and various com- 
binations that pleasing something that we call beauty, we 
cannot fail to find ourselves travelling through fields and 
forests, through foliage and flowers, along winding valleys 
and.flowering streams, over hills and mountains, towards the 
dwelling place of that invisible Being who is the Creator at 
once of that holiness of beauty and that beauty of holiness 
which reveals his own nature. From the beautiful in nature 
man learns what beauty is and becomes an admirer and lover 
of the beautiful, so much so that the beautiful in nature be- 
comes, for many souls at least, the most pleasing of all path- 
ways to God; and the beautiful in art becomes a most fitting 
and effective method of expressing what is ethical and holy 
and Godlike. All beautiful things alike in nature and im art— 
whether found in the pleasing combinations of colour, or the 
harmony of sounds as in music, or in the impressive objects 
in physical nature, or the stately and imposing structures of 
architecture, or in the pleasing flow of words and phrases as 
seen in poetry—in short all objects of beauty, all lovely things, 
are channels of thought and emotion that lead the devout 
soul to him who in creating our world made things not only 
useful but beautiful. 

The value of nature as a revealer of God is most appreciated 
by those who know God in and through a deep and soul-satis- 
fying personal experience. Finding God in nature deepens 
and enriches the religious experience which any one is already 
enjoying. Nature and grace when thus associated in religious 
experience reinforce each other as aids to faith and worship. 
How much more beautiful and divinely glorious nature ap- 


122 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


pears to a new-born soul after his conversion than it did when 
his sins were yet unrepented of and unforgiven, and his eyes 
were beclouded by sin and guilt. “Those who fail to find 
God in the material creation,’ says Dr. R. W. Dale, “and who 
think of him as active only in the spiritual world, will not be 
likely to find him in their common life, in which they are con- 
stantly dealing with material things. They will cultivate an 
artificial and pernicious form of spirituality. They will think 
of religion as consisting exclusively in prayer and worship 
and meditation on things unseen. Commerce and the pursuits 
of industry will be withdrawn from God’s control. Their 
morals will not be Christian morals. If the husbandman is 
to make his ploughing and sowing and reaping part of the serv- 
ice which he renders to God, he must find God in the material 
world; he cannot work with God in his husbandry unless he 
sees God is working with him in the life of the seed and in 
the gracious powers of the soil, of the sun’s heat, and of the 
rain. Let us not, therefore, depreciate the worth of that 
knowledge of God which is given to us through the visible 
and material creation, even though there be other and higher 
forms of divine activity through which God reveals himself 
more perfectly to rational and spiritual beings.” He who 
accustoms himself to commune with God in nature will never 
lack for a glorious temple in which to worship, nor for a 
song of thanksgiving and praise. 

To no students of nature do we owe more for the vision 
they get and give of God than to the poets. To them, many 
of them at least, nature is a beautiful and luminous pathway 
leading to a vision of God that may grow brighter and brighter 
to the perfect day. 


“Thou who hast given me eyes to see 
And love this world so fair, 
Give me a heart to find out Thee 
And read Thee everywhere.” 


This beautiful prayer of John Keble, the author of that 
noble book of devotion titled, ““The Christian Year,” is one 
that finds an echo in every truly Christian heart. He alone 


THROUGH NATURE TO GOD | 123 


will learn to “read God everywhere’ who has a “heart to 
find God.” A God-loving and God-seeking heart will find 
God in many places where hearts devoid of this divine instinct 
will never see him. They alone will get a vision of God 
who yearn to see him. God never reveals himself to indiffer- 
ent souls nor to impure souls. “Blessed are the pure in heart, 
for they shall see God’’—shall see him here and now on the 
earth, and not simply hereafter in heaven—shall see him not 
in the spiritual world only, but in the natural world also; 
and the vision they have of God in nature makes of it a 
spiritual world, full of his presence. 

That there are mysteries and difficulties in nature, things 
that challenge and even transcend reason, cannot be denied; 
but ‘atheistic materialism presents difficulties far more numer- 
ous and serious than those involved in theism. The appeal 
must be to reason. Which is more reasonable, let us ask, to 
put mind and personality first and matter second, or to put 
matter first and mind and personality second—to say that 
Mind and Personality created matter and control it, or that 
Matter created and controls mind and personality? One or 
the other of these alternatives must be true. Surely human 
reason can give but one answer to this question; it impera- 
tively demands that we choose the former alternative. The 
Psalmist exclaimed, and much more truly may we in the 
light of our new and larger knowledge of nature and its 
wonders exclaim: “O Lord, how manifold are thy works! 
In wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy 
riches!” 

Among recent nature-poems which give happy expression 
to the tendency of the human mind to reason from nature up 
to nature’s God is one by Claribel Weeks Avery, titled “Proof,” 
which appeared in the New York “Christian Advocate” and 
may be appropriately quoted here as furnishing a brief poetic 
statement of the argument set forth in this chapter: 


There is a God. For when I stand 
Where earth and ocean meet, 

The great sea flings its wealth of pearl 
And flora at his feet. 


124 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


There is a God. For when I kneel, 
He leans to hear my prayer, 

While little stars creep in and out 
Like fireflies through his hair. 


There is a God. For when I doub+ 
And most deserve his blame, 

He sends some little singing bird 
To thrill me with his name. 


There is a God. For when the sea 
And sky are blank as death 

And birds are mute, he comes to me 
So near I hear his breath. 


CHAPTER FIVE 


THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


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THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 


Let us turn now to the study of nature made by the men 
of science whose business it is to discover and formulate 
the laws of nature. We have already, in the preceding chapter, 
gotten into their company and have been journeying with 
them, more or less closely, in a territory peculiarly their own. 

“O God, I think thy thoughts after thee!’ exclaimed Kepler, 
the great scientist, once when, in studying the movements of 
the heavenly bodies, the glories of the physical universe came 
to him like a revelation from the Infinite Mind. The laws 
of nature are an expression of the thoughts of God. The 
significance of science is found in the fact that it is the thought 
of God interpreted and expressed in terms of human thought. 
To study nature and interpret it correctly is to discover God. 
Only a few men, however, are scientists and philosophers. 
All men have some knowledge of nature and are capable of 
drawing inferences from the knowledge they have. But the 
Scientist is he who has, or is supposed to have, a full and 
accurate knowledge of the facts and underlying principles 
of the great world of nature round about us. Assuming that 
an ordinary knowledge of nature generally leads one’s thoughts 
to God as we endeavoured to show in the last chapter, let us 
now inquire if a deeper and broader knowledge of nature, 
such as only scientists have, leads to a materialistic and athe- 
istic conception of the world? Some have said that this is 
the case. We will let scientists themselves answer this question 
in the course of this chapter. 


I 
WHAT 15 (SCIENCE? 


Science, in the sense in which we here use the term, means 


knowledge gained by systematic observation, experiment and 
127 






128 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


reasoning, the results of which are co-ordinated, arranged 
and systematised. It is particularly with reference to sys- 
tematised knowledge pertaining to the natural and physical | 
world that we are here using the term. “Since all phenomena 
which have been sufficiently examined are found to take place 
with regularity, each having certain fixed conditions, positive 
and negative, on the occurrence of which it invariably happens, — 
mankind have been able to ascertain the conditions of the — 
occurrence of many phenomena; and the progress of science 
mainly consists in ascertaining these conditions.” 

So confident is the scientist’s belief in the uniformity and | 
regularity of the operation of the laws of nature, that he _ 
makes his calculations with confidence as to what has occurred 
in the past and what, under similar conditions, will occur in 
the future. It is particularly because of the scientist’s infer- | 
ences as to what has occurred in the past in the realm of — 
nature and natural law that a conflict has at times arisen 
between the teachings of theologians based on their interpre- 
tations of the Bible and the opinions of scientists based on- 
their confident conviction that the laws of nature have operated 
in the past just as they are operating now—without interrup- — 
tion from any other sources or forces than those now observed — 
to be in operation. 


1. The Purpose of Science 


Most scientists seek only for the natural causes of natural” 
events and consider that they have fully explained anything 
in nature when they have discovered and stated such cause. — 
“Explanation in natural science means,’ to quote a scientific 
authority, “to state the law according to which a given phe- 
nomenon is connected with other phenomena, so that the en-_ 
trance of the one may be foreseen from the appearance of 
the others. The highest principle of all modern natural sci-— 
ence is the principle of the conservation of energy.” Y 


x 
* 


The theistic scientist seeks none the less because of his — 


being a theist for the natural cause of every occurrence, and — 
states it none the less clearly than does the anti-theistic sci- i 


entist; but he does not stop with this natural cause as if it” 


\ 
f 


THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 129 


was the full and final explanation of it. He sees something 
back of and beyond the natural cause, and so he feels that 
“The object of science is or ought to be not merely to de- 
scribe phenomena and to sort and label them, but to perceive 
their intellectual relations; and that means to perceive the 
Infinite Intellect which has prearranged them and is revealed 
in and by them.” 


2. Scientists the Proper Teachers of Science 


For our knowledge of matters in the realm of science most 
of us are dependent upon scientists, the men who know, or 
are supposed to know, the facts pertaining to the respective 
phases and departments of nature to a study of which they 
devote their lives. Experts and specialists who investigate 
carefully, who gather all the facts and weigh all the evidence 
in their respective fields of labour, are the men to whom we 
should look for opinions and conclusions that may be relied 
upon as most worthy of acceptance. It ill behooves those 
who know little of science to set up their opinions against 
those who know much and who are truth seekers in every 
sense as truly as are Bible students and theologians. The 
Bible was not written to teach science and is in no sense a 
scientific book, and no amount of knowledge of the Bible 
on our part justifies us in using its statements to offset and 
refute the well-accredited conclusions of students and teachers 
of science whose knowledge of their specialties gives them a 
right to speak and to be heard. 

Most of the sciences have begun first with hypotheses, which, 
when tried and found to work, have become scientific theories, 
and these when applied and proved have come to be recognised 
as accredited science. There may be much difference of opin- 
ion even among scientists as to the value of a mere hypothesis; 
and even when, as a working hypothesis, it has been success- 
fully tried and has had some scientists to adopt it as a true 
theory, other scientists may still not be satisfied and may for 
a time refuse to accept it. If it should happen that the great 
body of well-accredited scientists come to be agreed as to the 
truth of a particular scientific theory, and a considerable num- 


130 ~ THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


ber of churchmen and ecclesiastics not only refuse to accept 
it but take the unyielding position that such scientific theory 
must be rejected because it is contradicted by certain teachings 
of the Bible and the traditional Church creeds, then a serious 
situation is precipitated. Which of the two—the new science 
or traditional theology—is going to be compelled to yield? 
The history of the warfare that has ever and anon occurred 
in the past between science and traditional religious beliefs 
proves that well-accredited science has always held its own, and 
religious beliefs have been readjusted and brought into con- 
formity with its teachings. 

There is no more romantic and fascinating story in all lit- | 
erature than that which records the results of the labours and 
discoveries of modern scientists. We cannot more effectively 
set forth our reasons for believing that intelligence enters into 
and reigns throughout this world of ours,—that it is God’s 
world and that God is in his world—than by gathering from 
the writings of scientific authors some of the most interesting 
and marvellous facts and phenomena of nature which they 
describe. 

So marvellous, so bewildering and so all but inconceivable, 
are many of these facts (for example, those pertaining to the 
size, numbers and motion of atoms and electrons) that they 
could but be regarded as creations of the imagination, and 
unbelievable, were they not taken directly from men of science 
and supported by their authority. The studies of nature, of 
matter, its elements and atoms, during the past half century 
has added so much to man’s previous knowledge that it is 
quite common to speak of it as “the new enawiedaes of 
nature, or as “the new idea” of matter, of atoms and energy. 


1 Nowhere perhaps has this story been told in a more interesting man- 
ner than by Professor J. Arthur Thomson of Aberdeen, Scotland, in a 
work already referred to, “The Outline of Science.” We hereby acknowl- 
edge our indebtedness to this valuable work for facts here presented. 

“The teachers of divinity to the coming age,” says Dr. Newman Smyth, 
“will need, as an essential element of the instruction in schools of theology, 
a working knowledge of modern methods of scientific inquiry. Some ac- 
quaintance especially with biological studies and results should be made a 
required part of any thorough ‘education for the modern ministry of the | 
word of life.” (‘Through Science to Faith.”) 


THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 131 


IT 


THE DIFFERENT SCIENCES ASJRELATED TO FAITH 
IN. A PERSONAL? GOD 


There are some sciences the study of which, more than 
perhaps is true of others, leads the human mind to the con- 
viction that what we call nature cannot be explained on any 
other hypothesis than that of an intelligent personal Creator 
and Governor of the Universe. Even if it must be admitted 
that this hypothesis does not offer an entirely satisfactory an- 
swer to and explanation of all the questions raised, it answers 
many more of these questions than does any other hypothesis 
—and this is treating the conception of a Divine Creator sim- 
ply as a scientific hypothesis wholly apart from the question 
of divine revelation. 


1. Through Astronomy to God 


“Two things,’ said Immanuel! Kant, “fill the mind with ever 
new and increasing admiration and awe the oftener and the 
more steadily they are contemplated, the starry heavens above 
me, and the moral law within me.’ ‘This means that this 
greatest of modern philosophers travelled “through nature to 
God” and then “through man to God,” just as we are doing 
in these studies. Let us turn now to a consideration of the 
first of the two things that so profoundly impressed him, the 
starry heavens. 

Among the most mysterious facts and forces of the physical 
universe is the law of gravitation, which assumes that every 
particle of matter attracts every other throughout the universe. 
It was Sir Isaac Newton who first worked out in mathematical 
terms of marvellous accuracy and universality of application 
the operations of this wonderful law. Without a knowledge 
of this law astronomy could never have become a science. 
Many important and interesting facts concerning the heavenly 
bodies may be named which serve to show how truly to men 
in our day, as to those living in former ages, astronomy rightly 
interpreted is a pathway to God. 


132 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


The spectroscope has been called “the greatest instrument 
ever devised by the brain and hand of man,” and this because 
it reveals to us the physical elements that enter into the con- 
stitution of the sun and the stars. It will detect a particle of 
matter so small as the millionth part of a milligram; will 
reveal the nature of forms of matter trillions of miles away 
and measure the velocity with which the forms of matter are 
moving through space. Astronomers have devised many other 
instruments to enable them to gain accurate information con- 
cerning the heavenly bodies, some of which are developed to 
a point of refinement and exactitude that would be regarded 
as incredible but for the fact that their accuracy can be and 
is demonstrated beyond the possibility of question. The chief 
value of the spectroscope consists in its power to analyse light 
into its constituent elements and colours. Sodium, iron, cop- 
per, zinc, magnesium and other elementary substances found 
in our earth are in this way proved to be in the sun. Each 
substance when it has been made luminous and incandescent 
displays its own specific and individual colour. The light that 
comes from the sun we call white light; but this light comes 
not from any one luminous substance alone, but from several 
substances intermingled and blended in an incandescent state. 
The spectroscope (the simplest and most familiar forms of 
which are found in the glass prism and the rainbow) analyses 
this white light of the sun into seven primary colours, viz.: 
red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Reverse 
the process and blend rays of light representing these seven 
colours into one, and it will make white light like that of the 
sun. 

While all the constituent elements found in our earth were 
soon found by the spectrum analysis to be also in the sun, as 
far back as 1868 a close observation revealed a certain light 
emanating from prominences on the sun which indicated the 
presence there of a gaseous substance which was not known 
to exist in our earth. Scientists named it helium (from 
helios, the Greek word for sun), and began searching for 
the same substance here in our earth, and in 1895 Sir William 
Ramsay’s researches were rewarded by the discovery of this 


THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 1338 


hitherto unknown element in our planet. The solar spectrum 
reveals in its analysis of light taken directly from the corona ° 
of the sun still another substance as present there which, if it 
be present in our earth, has not yet been discovered. It is 
called coronium. It remains to be seen who among our scien- 
tists will add another jewel to the fair and already luminous 
crown of science by discovering coronium hid away in some 
mineral pocket of the earth. 

Modern astronomers explain the Milky Way by saying that 
it represents clusters and constellations of starry worlds ar- 
ranged approximately in the form of an enormous disc, pos- 
sibly with some spiral features characterising its form; and 
that our solar system is either in the centre of this disc which 
constitutes our universe, or at most only a few hundred tril- 
lions of miles distant from the actual centre. As we look along 
the plane of this star-studded disc in any direction, the worlds 
of light are so numerous as to make the field of vision look 
like white silvery clouds of light, whereas if we look out at 
right angles to this starry disc in any direction the worlds of 
light are much less numerous and may be seen singly and 
apart from each other. 

These are some of the many facts that may be named which 
serve to explain why it is that astronomy stands first among 
the sciences, the study of which leads to God. Its eater eee 
worlds and immeasurable distances give us, as nothing else 
does or can, the idea of the Infinite. The study of the heav- 
enly bodies—of the solar system, with its planets all moving in 
perfect harmony and adjustment to each other; the countless 
stars, all of which are doubtless centres of solar systems like 
our own, and all so perfectly adjusted to each other that each 
influences and is in turn influenced by all the others; the 
beauty, the glory, the sense of the infinite that is awakened in 
the soul as the eye takes in the heavenly vision—this con- 
templation of the heavens, as we have already pointed out, has 
perhaps from the beginning of time led more thoughtful and 
studious minds to belief in the existence of a Divine Being 
than any other phase of the study of nature. In a workshop 
so vast where everything is working and moving in the most 


134 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


perfect harmony there must be a worker. In a house so 
spacious and glorious there must be an inhabitant. It is un- 
thinkable that there should be a universe so infinite in its ex- 
tension and in its contents as astronomy reveals without an 
infinite Personality to give it rational interpretation and spirit- 
ual significance. 


2. Through Physics and Chemistry to God 


The sciences of physics and of chemistry may be dis- 
tinguished from each other, but they cannot be separated. 
Each has to do with matter and its properties as represented 
in the ninety-two elements of nature with their atoms and 
molecules. For our present purpose, which is the considera- 
tion of physical nature in its relation to a causative and con- 
trolling Intelligence, it is needful that we bring together a 
number of facts that science has collected and correlated, and 
find out, if we can, whether they point to or away from God. 

When scientists tell us that an atom of hydrogen in water 
at the freezing point is moving at the rate of seventy miles a 
minute, we can conceive what it means even though we cannot 
understand how that marvellous mechanical operation can be 
going on in the freezing pool of water before our very eyes 
and we see nothing of it. But when they tell us further, as 
they do, that each and every one of these particles of hydrogen 
at this freezing moment is having seventeen billion and seven 
hundred million collisions with other particles every second, 
they are saying something that we not only cannot under- 
stand, but which we cannot even conceive. 

With the discovery of the X-Ray and radium, and the re- 
sultant revelation that “‘atoms of matter are continually send- 
ing forth exceedingly small particles or sparks of radiant-mat- 
ter called electrons,’ physics and chemistry are said to have 
entered upon a new era of development which promises in due 
time to contribute much to our knowledge of nature and our 
power to turn its energies and forces to the beneficent service 
of mankind. 


“Experiments have proved that well-nigh every form of 


THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 135 


matter can be stimulated to the point of radio-activity where it 
will emit rays and send forth electrons. Every glowing metal 
is pouring out a stream of electrons. [Every arc-lamp is dis- 
charging them. Every clap of thunder means a shower of 
them. Every star is flooding space with them. The sun is 
constantly pouring out vast streams of them.” “An electron 
can only maintain a separate existence if it is travelling at an 
immense velocity—from ten to a hundred thousand miles a 
second. If it moves at less than six hundred miles a second 
the electron sticks to the first atom it meets. Because electrons 
are attracted by magnets just like electricity they are supposed 
to be of an electrical nature. The identification of these 
electrons with electricity is about all that as yet has been 
definitely settled concerning them; but this does not explain 
what electricity is—it has only brought the physicist one step 
nearer the discovery of what it is.” 

“The fact that these electrons are in a state of violent 
motion or strain is proof that a vast amount of energy is 
locked up in atoms of matter. Half a brick, it is said, con- 
tains as much energy as a small coal-field. It is believed, how- 
ever, by many scientists that some day the secret will be dis- 
covered how the energy that is stored in atoms can be released, 
harnessed and utilised. If that expectation should ever be 
realised, the economic, industrial and social face of the world 
will be transformed.” * 


Among the wonders of the age of science in which we live 
we must not fail to mention the marvellous instruments which 
scientists have invented and constructed for making their ex- 
periments and testing their theories. For instance, when they 
invented scales so delicately poised as to give accurately the 
weight of the ink or lead mark adhering to a sheet of paper in 
writing a single word with a pen or pencil, it was thought to 
be the limit of inventive genius. But another instrument, the 
spectroscope, was found to detect a quantity of matter four 
million times smaller than enters into that black mark placed 
on the paper; and there is yet another instrument, called the 
electroscope, that is said to be a million times more sensitive 


1 See Thomson’s “Outline of Science,” from which these statements are 
culled. 


136 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


than the spectroscope. Ordinary house thermometers register — 
the rise or fall of the temperature for every degree or half 
degree change in the heat or cold; but scientists have an in- 
strument called the bolometer, that will record, it is said, even 
one millionth of one degree of change in heat or cold. But 
these are only specimens of hundreds of instruments which 
have been constructed for studying nature and discovering its 
secrets; and we glory in them as proofs and triumphs of intel- 
ligence and genius on the part of those who not only invented 
them but used them to find out the facts of nature hitherto 
unknown to men. But can it be that it takes mind of the very 
highest order of intelligence to invent instruments and to use 
them for the discovery of things in nature, hidden laws and 
secret forces, and to interpret and use them for wise and 
beneficent purposes, and yet the things themselves, nature’s ele- 
ments and atoms and forces, sustain no relation to a creative 
and controlling Intelligence? Can intelligence interpret what 
intelligence had nothing to do with designing and doing? To 
answer this question rationally is to think through nature to 
God. 


3. Through Geology to God 


If we can ascend to God through astronomy and a study of 
the heavenly bodies, it is none the less true that we can descend 
to God through geology and a study of our planet as revealed 
in the strata that form the earth’s surface. Indeed it is these 
stony strata of the earth’s surface that reveal, as nothing else in 
nature does, the age and the gradual development through 
geologic eras of our world and of our entire solar and planetary 
system. At least such is the testimony of one of the greatest 
of American geologists, “My first contact with natural science,” 
says Dr. N. S. Shaler, the late distinguished and scholarly 
professor of Geology in Harvard University, “had the not 
uncommon effect of leading me far away from Christianity. 
Of late years a further insight into the truths of nature has 
gradually forced me back again towards the ground from 
which I had departed. And I think I am not mistaken in be- — 
lieving that my own experience represents the course which — 


THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 137 


many other naturalists are more or less consciously following. 
Beginning with the simpler and apparently mechanical facts 
with which they have to deal, inquirers into natural phenomena 
are at first almost necessarily led to conceive nature as a great 
engine, which can be explained as we account for a combination 
of wheels and levers. Gradually, as they are forced to more 
extended views of their subject-matter, they perceive that 
this simple explanation is unsatisfactory. Without conscious 
argument, moved merely by the weight of the truths which 
are insensibly driven in upon them, they find their conceptions 
enlarging; and they are compelled to suppose a kind of control 
operating in their world which is not purely dynamic. When 
they attain this position, it seems to me to be time for them 
to examine the ground they occupy, with a view to finding 
what is its relation to that held by the older schools of inter- 
pretation, those which we call the theological. The matter 
which I have to present to you in these lectures is directed to 
this end. But in this presentation I approach the matter from 
my own point of view, my aim being to show the state of 
mind to which the student of natural phenomena is brought 
by influences which are entirely independent of theological 
opinions.” 

“The first stage of natural inquiry led men of science to the 
curious and undeclared assumption that the visible was the 
essential part of the universe. As inquiries, however, have 
gone deeper into the realm of causation, especially as the con- 
ditions of organic life have been made’ the subject of more 
penetrating study, the sense of the profundity of natural law 
has been continually enhanced. Naturalists are being driven 
step by step to hypothecate the presence in the universe of 
conditions which are best explained by the supposition that 
the direction of affairs is in the control of something like 
our own intelligence. Whoever will inform himself as to 
the trend of modern science will see that even where the 
votaries of the new learning are most indisposed to recognise 
the increasing measure of their theistic motives, the increase 
is nevertheless discernible. In other words, it seems to me 
that the naturalist is coming more and more to approach the 


138 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


position of the philosophical theologian by paths which at 
first seemed to lie far apart from his domain.”’ * 


4. Through Biology to God 


“What a wonderful imagination God the Creator must 
have!’ Thus exclaimed the poet laureate of England once 
while contemplating the many manifestations around him of 
the mind of God revealed in nature. Linnzus once said, 
“There are as many different species as there were ideas in 
the Divine Mind.” No modern theist would venture to put 
such a limitation to the “ideas in the Divine Mind” as seems 
to be involved in this utterance attributed to Linnzeus. But 
it is quite certain that modern science has given to modern 
biologists and botanists such a conception of the extent and 
boundlessness of the forms of life, of living germs and life- 
cells within life, as would lead Linnzus, were he living to-day, 
greatly to enlarge his estimate of the number of ideas in the 
Divine Mind. ‘This can be best shown by presenting some 
facts and statements gathered from the writings of modern 
scientists. 

The different kinds of living creatures amount to hundreds 
of thousands, each with a definite individuality of its own. 
There are, we are told, twenty-five thousand different species 
of animals with backbones, and ten times as many different 
species (mostly insects) that are without backbones. And 
there are about as many different species of plants as there 
are of animals—so botanists tell us. For every species of 
plant life that is common and conspicuous there are said to 
be twenty that are inconspicuous and rarely seen; and for 
every species of animal life that is visible there are said to 
be a hundred that are unseen. 

The why and wherefore of all these myriads of living 
creatures—what the “idea in the Divine Mind” was that led 
God to create them or have nature give birth and being to them 
—may forever remain an impenetrable secret of nature, an in- 
comprehensible mystery hidden from men. But certain it is 


1“The Interpretation of Nature.” See also the quotation from Dr. 
Winchell in the next chapter. 


THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 139 


that the mystery is not rendered less marvellous or more com- 
prehensible by assuming and asserting that all is due to mindless 
matter and that God has had nothing to do with it. On the 
contrary, life as it appears in the vegetable and animal world 
even more than physics or chemistry, and more than astronomy 
or geology, calls for such an intelligence as is found only in 
a living personal God as the only satisfactory explanation of 
the origin and continued maintenance of conditions that make 
life not only possible but superabounding. And the continu- 
ance of life, when all its conditions are considered, scarcely 
less than the origin of life, demands a living God. Let us 
note a few of these conditions of life on our planet that make 
us marvel at the fact of life and its mysteries, and make us 
feel. that they can best be described as originating in and 
guided by Intelligence—the theist regards them as “providen- 
tial,’’ and this none the less because they may be instances 
of “adaption to environment’ concerning which evolutionists 
have so much to say. There is no way in which intelligence 
manifests itself more than in adaptation to environment— 
and the more extended in time and comprehensive in detail 
the adaptation, the more manifest is the intelligence. 

It is a well known fact that carbon is an element of nature 
that enters into all organic substances and is an essential of 
life. Combined with oxygen it makes carbonic acid gas which 
is essential to plant life, and is healthful if taken into the 
human stomach but is poison if inhaled in large quantities 
into the human lungs. There is a small quantity of carbonic 
acid gas in the air that we breathe, which is composed mainly 
of nitrogen and oxygen, but the quantity is so small (only one 
gallon in every twenty-five hundred gallons of air) that it is 
not detrimental to human life. It is absolutely necessary that 
there should be this amount of carbonic acid gas in the air, 
no more and no less, to maintain the equilibrium necessary 
for animal and vegetable life; if there were more, man could 
not live in it, and, if there were less, vegetable life that minis- 
ters to human life could not exist in it. 

Consider, again, the relation of life to the matter of heat 
and cold as it is found in the solar system, and on our planet. 


140 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


The temperature of the sun is estimated to represent not less 
than a hundred thousand degrees of heat, while the space 
intervening between the sun and the earth is thought by scien- 
tists to be hundreds of degrees below zero. The heat of the 
earth at its molten center is placed by scientists at approxi- 
mately ten thousand degrees. Organic life demands a temper- 
ature not less than thirty-two (freezing point) and not higher 
than about one hundred and thirty-two degrees—that is, it 
has a possible range of only about one hundred degrees in 
which it can be permanently maintained here upon the surface 
of the earth. Or, if we may represent it longitudinally, let 
us draw a line a mile and a half long (which is equal to seven 
thousand, nine hundred and twenty feet) to represent the 
heat of the sun, and mark off eight feet on that line, and this 
will represent the one hundred degrees range of heat which life 
requires on our planet as compared with the maximum tem- 
perature of our solar source of heat. 

It is easy to see how quickly life would become extinct if 
any considerable increase in the quantity of carbonic acid gas 
in our air should take place, or if any considerable quantity 
of the vast pent-up store of heat in the sun or in the center 
of the earth should be turned loose upon our planet. David 
once exclaimed, “There is but one step between me and death.” 
If these statements which I have made, and all of which I 
have taken from scientific sources, are even approximately 
true, we need only to add to our earth’s surface enough heat 
from the sun, or from the earth’s hot center, to represent an 
addition of three feet to the eight-foot section of that mile 
and a half line, to make it true that there is but one step between 
all living things and death! We cannot wonder at a poet ex- 
claiming: | 

“OQ God, on what a slender thread 
Hang all created things!” 


We find another most remarkable adjustment of physical 
conditions whereby life is made possible in the case of freezing 
water, a case of “concurrence” which we cannot think just | 
happened to be so by accident and chance. We will let Dr. 


THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 141 


Josiah Parsons Cook, the late eminent Professor of Chemistry 
in Harvard University, describe these conditions and their 
consequences. We quote from his notable volume titled “Re- 
ligion and Chemistry.” 


“The surface water, as it cools below this temperature 
[39 | remains at the top, and in the end freezes; but then 
comes into play still another provision in the properties of 
‘water. Most substances are heavier in their solid than in their 
liquid state; but ice, on the contrary, is lighter than water, and 
therefore floats on its surface. Moreover, as ice is a very 
poor conductor of heat, it serves as a protection to the lake, 
so that, at the depth of a few feet at most, the temperature 
of the water during winter is never under 40°, although 
the atmosphere may continue for weeks below zero. If water 
resembled other liquids, and continued to contract with cold 
to its freezing point; if this exception had not been made, the 
whole order of nature would have been reversed. ‘The cir- 
culation [which exists above 40°] would continue until the 
whole mass of water in the lake had fallen to the freezing 
point. The ice would then first form at the bottom, and the 
congelation would then continue until the whole lake had been 
changed into one mass of solid ice. Upon such a mass the 
hottest summer would produce but little effect. . . . It is un- 
necessary to state that this condition of things would be utterly 
inconsistent with the existence of aquatic plants or animals, and 
it would be almost as fatal to organic life everywhere; for not 
only are all parts of the creation so indissolubly bound together 
that if one member suffers all the other members suffer with 
it, but, moreover, the soil itself would to a certain extent share 
in the fate of the ponds. . . . Thus, then, it appears that the 
very existence of life in these temperate regions of the earth 
depends on an apparent exception to a general law of nature so 
slight and limited in its extent that it can only be detected 
by the most refined scientific observation.” * 


We note yet a fourth feature of our physical world that 
ministers to life and without which life would not be possible 
—and that is inertia. One of the properties of matter is inertia 


1 “Religion and Chemistry,” revised edition (1886), pp. 149-151. 


142 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


by virtue of which it remains at rest unless something other 
than itself moves it. Now we are told by astronomers that 
all the heavenly bodies in the universe are in motion, and by 
the physicists in keeping with the new conception of matter 
that atoms of every kind are radiant-matter (either actually 
or potentially so) which is continually throwing off electrons. 
The planets we learn have a three-fold motion, revolving 
around the central sun, rotating upon their axes and then, 
along with the sun, participating in that cosmic motion that 
characterises all the stars and solar systems of the universe. 
In the infinitely great world of astronomy and the infinitesi- 
mally minute world of the physical atom nothing is at rest— 
everything is moving, and this motion alike of the stars and 
of the atomic electrons is so rapid it can only be approximately 
measured or computed. How fortunate it is, now, that between 
the ever-moving tiny corpuscles that compose atoms and the 
ever-moving planets and stars of heaven,—between the great- 
est and the minutest forms of existence,—there come many 
material bodies, or aggregations of matter, which are at rest, 
are inert,—without power to move. But for this fact, life of 
every kind would be impossible on our planet. If it be true} 
therefore, that motion and force are everywhere present and 
regnant throughout the universe, it is also true that this great 
and all-pervading law of nature is checked in its operation 
and balanced by another beneficent law, that of the inertia of 
matter. If, because of the one law we ‘“‘live and move,” and 
are continually “becoming,” because of the other law, that of 
the inertia of many things, we “have our being,” and can know 
what rest is. He who himself wrought six days in creation 
and rested on the seventh, said to man “six days shalt thou 
work, and on the seventh thou shalt rest,’ and in so doing 
he recognised the essential place of rest in the life of man. 
The inertia of matter is not a symbol of death and uncon- 
sciousness but of the rest that follows toil. By the inertia of 
matter the God of life has made life possible for his creatures, 
however true it be that their life is dependent on motion and 
manifests itself in ceaseless motion. 


THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 143 


Our survey of these sciences leads to the conclusion that 
if the existence of an immanent Intelligence, an always and 
everywhere active God, be offered and tried out as nothing more 
than a rational, scientific working hypothesis to account for 
the origin and continuous operations of nature and its laws, 
it not only is not contradicted by any facts of nature but fur- 
nishes a rational explanation of most of the facts far more 
satisfactory than does any other scientific hypothesis. It is 
infinitely more satisfying to the mind of every rightly reason- 
ing man than atheism is. 


III 
SCIENCE AND CHRISTIAN FAITH 


The foregoing presentation of some of the many marvellous 
facts of animate and inanimate nature which modern science 
has made known to us prepares us for a consideration of the 
question as to whether or not the scientific conception of nature 
as under the reign of regular and uniform law is in conflict 
with theistic faith in a personal God related to nature as its 
Creator and Governor. 


1. Science and the Bible 


A generation ago we heard much about the contradiction 
between Science and the Bible. Those who recognised this 
contradiction as real were divided into two groups, namely, 
dogmatic theologians and dogmatic scientists. The former 
said that because of this contradiction, science must be false; 
the latter said, because of this contradiction, the Bible could 
not be a true and inspired book. The present generation has 
found that the contradiction was not between nature and the 
Bible, but between man’s interpretation of nature and the 
prevalent interpretation of the Bible. When both were rightly 
interpreted the contradiction disappeared. 

“Whoever says that he lost God through studying nature 
never really possessed him,’ some one has truly said. Men 
may learn infidelity from other men and from books, but they 


144 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


can never learn it from nature, if it be rightly interpreted. 
Nature reveals God as truly as a building reveals the mind 
of the architect who planned it and the workman who exe- 
cuted the plan. While it is true that the Bible and nature, 
when both are rightly interpreted, cannot possibly contradict 
each other, many things in nature do contradict what men 
have read into the Bible. On the contrary, the Bible is full 
of nature and of the relation of nature to both God and man; 
nature is the meeting place between God and man. In finding 
nature a path that leads unerringly to God, all who believe in 
the validity of reasoning through nature to nature’s God are 
in accord, and this regardless of whether they be simple un- 
lettered believers or learned theologians and skilled scien- 
tists. 

“Where science begins faith ends,’ said one who thought 
he found in the scientific study of nature a path that leads 
not to but away from faith in God. That not a few modern 
scientists have been materialists and atheists cannot be denied; 
but of many of these it may be said that they disguised rather 
than denied the existence of God. 

Among the early and influential leaders of the Christian 
Church who recognised that the Bible was not meant to teach 
science and should not be quoted in opposition to it was St. 
Augustine. “There are some questions,’ said St. Augustine, 
“pertaining to the earth or the sky or other elements of this 
world, respecting which one who is not a Christian believer 
may have knowledge derived from careful observation and 
from the most certain reasoning; and it is mischievous and 
disgraceful, and of all things to be carefully avoided, that a 
Christian, speaking of such matters as according to or contrary 
to the Scriptures, should be heard by an unbeliever talking such 
nonsense that the unbeliever, perceiving him to be as wide from 
the mark as the east is from the west, can hardly restrain him- 
self from laughing in derision.” 

Ptolemy worked out a scheme of astronomy and made the 
earth the centre of the solar system; and notwithstanding the 
fact that all the stars of heaven in their courses fought against 


THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 145 


his scheme more than they fought against Sisera, people long 
believed it, and because it was traditionally orthodox as science 
and in accord with the Bible as then interpreted, men of that 
day doubtless congratulated themselves on the harmony be- 
tween science and the Bible. And then when Copernicus and 
Galileo devised a different scheme, and made the sun the centre, 
notwithstanding the fact that every movement of the heavenly 
bodies accorded with their theory, these men and their followers 
were anathematised and denounced as heretics, not because their 
new theory lacked confirmatory proof, but because their views 
were out of accord with traditional orthodoxy and the Bible 
as then interpreted. And yet truth was on their side; and 
won the day—was bound to win, because it was the truth 
about nature. But men did not thereupon deny the Bible; 
they simply changed their method of interpreting the Bible. 
The Bible is a source-book of religion, not of science. 

To tie the Bible up with any theories of science, in any 
of its departments or spheres, or with any theories of ethics, 
as held in any period of history, is to imperil its authority in 
the only realm where we may properly claim that it is an 
authority, namely, in the realm of religion where it is found 
to be of the highest value as a progressive revelation and pro- 
gressive interpretation of the nature and will of God. Thus 
interpreted the Bible has no conflict with science. 

“In general,’ says Professor George P. Fisher, “we find 
that the Bible confines itself to this circle of truths (moral 
and religious truths). The ideas of nature, apart from its 
direct religious bearings, are such as contemporary knowledge 
had attained. The geography, the astronomy, the meteorology, 
the geology of the Scriptural authors are on the plane of their 
times. Copernicus and Columbus, Aristotle and Newton, are 
not anticipated. The Bible renders unto science the things of 
science. If we glance at the history of the interpretation of 
the first chapter of Genesis, we shall find that the meaning 
given to it in different periods is generally matched to the 
Bcience of the day.’ * 


1 “Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief,” p. 442. 


146 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Dr. G. A. Johnston Ross, writing concerning the true 
Christian attitude towards modern science, says: 


“Tt is my conviction that two classes of people in particular 
have a just complaint to make against the gaps in our preach- 
ing upon nature: first, the scientific student of nature and 
investigator into its secrets, the man in the physical laboratory 
who yesterday mocked at our religion and to-day is our 
teacher and rebuke in reverence. Behind the whole bad busi- 
ness of the debate between science and religion lay the disas- 
trous failure on the part of the religionist to teach the divinity 
of science, a failure to claim the fields and virtues of patient, 
honest scientific research as part of the area and workings of 
God’s Holy Spirit. Had that been done; had we preachers, 
instead of ecclesiasticising God’s Holy Spirit, been faithful to 
the broad and comprehensive view of the field of His opera- 
tions which we inherit from the prophets of Israel, there had 
never arisen the baneful notion that science stands outside 
religion, that the things we see and touch are less sacred and 
sacramental than the things we think and hope. There is no 
reason to believe that the Church will be able to recover its 
lost members among the students of science until she gives 
up the partialities of her theism and frankly recognises that 
the God of the laboratory and the God of the prayer-meeting 
are one.”’ | 


2. The Faith of Scientists 


In refutation of the claim sometimes made that the scien- 
tific study of nature is atheistic in its tendencies, it is easy 
to call up a cloud of witnesses, who have been devout believers 
in God and the Bible and the Christian Church, and have yet 
at the same time been devoted students of nature and have, as 
a result of their successful labours, earned recognition as 
great scientists, than whom no greater can be named: Coper- 
nicus, Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Humboldt, John Kepler, Isaac 
Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and others 
just as great who are now living. 

The late Prof. George J. Romanes was an eminent scientist. 
In the earlier part of his life he was a pronounced disbeliever 


THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 147 


in Christianity and wrote a book in which he undertook to 
show how utterly impossible it was to prove the existence of 
God. Heclaimed that none of the arguments commonly relied 
upon by theists to prove the existence of a Divine Being were 
convincing to reason or at all satisfactory to a scientific mind. 
Later in life, however, after many years spent in the study 
of nature as a scientist, he became convinced that infidelity 
and atheism involved more difficulties than theism, and his 
volume titled “Thoughts on Religion,’ published just after 
his death, not only retracts his former unjust criticisms upon 
theism, but presents some of the strong, positive evidences 
which led him to change his mind and declare his faith in 
the existence of God and the divinity of Christ. Hear his 
conclusion and his explanation of his former disbelief: “By 
no logical artifice can we escape from the conclusion that, so 
far as we can see, this universal order must be regarded as 
due to some one integrating principle, and that this, so far 
as we can see, is most probably of the nature of mind.... 
At one time it seemed to me impossible that any proposition, 
verbally intelligible as such, could be more violently absurd 
than that of the doctrine of the incarnation. Now I see that 
this standpoint is wholly irrational, due only to the blindness 
of reason itself promoted by purely scientific habits of thought. 
... In every generation it must henceforth become more 
and more recognised by logical thinkers that all antecedent 
objections to Christianity founded upon reason alone are ipso 
facto nugatory. . .. Neither philosophy, science, nor poetry 
has ever produced results in thought, conduct, or beauty in 
any degree to be compared with it. Only to a man wholly 
destitute of spiritual perception can it be that Christianity 
should fail to appear the greatest exhibition of the beautiful 
and the sublime, and of all else that appeals to our spiritual na- 
ture, which has ever been known upon earth. What has all the 
science or all the philosophy of the world done for the thought 
of mankind to be compared with the one doctrine, God is 
love?” Romanes was an honest truth seeker, and that means, 
whether consciously or unconsciously, a seeker after God. In 


148 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


the closing years of his life there came to him that for which 
the great poet laureate of England prayed—‘“‘a new vision of 
Gods 

On the tombstones of Louis Pasteur, who was known as 
a deeply religious man, are inscribed words which he had 
himself written in life: “Happy is he who carries a God within 
him, an ideal of beauty to which he is obedient—an ideal of 
art, an ideal of science, an ideal of the fatherland, an ideal of 
the virtues of the Gospel.” The last century produced no 
greater English scientist than Lord Kelvin, who said: “Sci- 
ence is not antagonistic but helpful to religion. If you think 
strongly enough you will be forced by science to the belief in 
God which is the foundation of all religion. I believe that 
the more thoroughly science is studied the further does it 
take us from anything comparable to atheism.” 

If one should be called on to furnish an ideal example of 
a man who combined in himself all that is highest and best in 
Christian character and culture, in literary and scientific schol- 
arship, who was a believer both in God and in the scientific 
doctrine of evolution, the name that would probably come first 
of all to his mind would be that of Henry Drummond. His 
“Ascent of Man” is an ascent to God at the same time that 
it represents the development of man from lower forms of life 
in and through evolution, to that which is highest physically, 
intellectually and socially. His “best thing in the world” was 
love, that perfect love which has been revealed in the heart 
of God and in the life of Christ as the aim and end and goal 
of all human progress. 

There is perhaps no more distinguished physicist in America 
than Dr. Robert A. Millikan, former professor of Physics 
in the University of Chicago, now of the California Institute 
of Technology, who enjoys the distinction of being the first 
scientist to succeed in isolating an electron. A confession of 
faith in God and in the divine-human Christ could hardly 
come from a scientific man in words more clear, sane, and pro- 
nounced than that to be found in a recent utterance of Dr. 
Millikan: “It is to me unthinkable that a real atheist should | 


THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 149 


exist at all. It seems to me as obvious as breathing that every 
man who is sufficiently in his senses to recognise his own 
inability to comprehend the problem of existence, to under- 
stand whence he himself came and whither he is going, must 
in the very admission of that ignorance and finiteness recognise 
the existence of a Something, a Power, a Being, in whom and 
because of whom he himself lives and moves and has his being. 
That Power, that Something, that Existence, we call God. 
. . . Lam not much concerned as to whether I agree precisely 
with you in my conception of God or not. Both your concep- 
tion and mine must in the nature of the case be vague and 
indefinite, for “can men with thinking find out God.’ ... If 
you in your conception identify God with nature, you must 
perforce attribute to him consciousness and personality, or 
better, superconsciousness and superpersonality. You cannot 
possibly synthesise nature and leave out its most outstanding 
attributes. Nor can you get those potentialities out of nature, 
no matter how far back you go in time. In other words, ma- 
terialism, as commonly understood, is an altogether absurd 
and an utterly irrational philosophy, and is indeed so regarded 
by most thoughtful men.” 

The statement of a recent writer that “on the purely scien- 
tific side of nature Christ did not touch” may be true, and yet 
we can but feel with Dr. Francis H. Smith of the University 
of Virginia, that science which concerns itself with the facts 
and laws of nature can never find itself out of harmony with 
the teachings of Christ, the greatest and truest interpreter of 
nature. In his Cole Lectures titled ‘Christ and Science,” 
Dr. Smith says: 


“With the evidence of Christ’s love of nature before us, 
it seems strange that in so many ages of the Church Chris- 
tians have looked with suspicion if not with enmity on the study 
of the visible creation. They feared or believed that it led 
away from the Master, not to him. When the honest votaries 
of science were led to views of the world different from those 
which pious people had formed from a hasty interpretation of 
biblical expressions never meant to teach science, they were 


150 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


at once classed with the infidels, and their learning was de- 
nounced as irreligious. It is not Galileo whom in this day 
we look upon as wrong, but the Churchmen who condemned: 
and pursued him. We have learned slowly that to reject a 
creed is not of necessity irreligious, and that honest search 
for truth is a Christian trait in the scientist’s laboratory not 
less than in the Pastor’s study. 

“The material universe, as we know it, discloses most won- 
derfully the majesty and might of the Creator, while the hid- 
ings of his power in the great realm of electricity and the 
world of the atom are yielding to the searching of men ineffa- 
ble lessons of his wisdom. The rapidly increasing knowledge 
of nature is bringing out into clearer light that there is a 
plan in the world, and hence there must have been a Designer. 
What the material universe taught men of God in the early 
ages it still teaches—with increased force and added richness. 
The multiplicity of facts accumulating from year to year does 
not impair the unity of creation. If Christ be the maker of 
all worlds, there must be harmony between all worlds. The 
unity of the creation, physical and spiritual, lies in the unity 
of the Creator. It will be a glorious day when the recognition 
of Christ as the Master of all worlds, the source and support 
of all activity in all spheres, shall be complete. The movement 
of the age is toward Christ, not away from him. The sound 
thinkers of the world are more and more turning toward 
Christ; and the day is already dawning when fair Science 
will cast her crown at his feet and hail the Son of Mary as 
the Son of God—of whom and through whom and to whom 
are all things.” 


A certain reluctance to accept the results of the scientific 
study of nature has characterised conservative minds in all 
ages of the Christian Church. It is interesting and profitable 
now, says G. E. Hale, “to recall the extraordinary character- 
istics of the medizeval mind, which tested everything new by 
a comparison of ancient texts, and refused to appeal to the 
simple and direct proof of observation or experiment. Luther 
and Melancthon, among other leaders of human thought, 
vigorously opposed the Copernican theory, the latter on the 
ground that ‘the Holy Scriptures state that Joshua bade the | 
sun stand still and not the earth.’ But, as Pritchett has pointed 


THROUGH SCIENCE TO GOD 151 


out, perhaps the most remarkable evidence of man’s persistent 
dislike of the conception of a moving earth is afforded by 
the strong dissent of Francis Bacon, though truly regarded 
as one of the founders of modern thought. In providing the 
evidence which ultimately rescued the world from this de- 
plorable state, Galileo initiated the development of modern 
science and stimulated the discoveries of the explorers and 
investigators of the Renaissance. Once more, as in the early 
Greek period and again in the Alexandrian School, astronomy 
led the way, and by its great discoveries encouraged research 
in all other branches of science.” * 

If it be true that the physical sciences have a trustworthy 
basis in physical nature, it is none the less true, says Professor 
J. M. Coulter of Chicago University, that Christianity has 
a scientific basis in the nature of man, and that its results can 
be demonstrated just as clearly and convincingly as can the 
results that have been proved in the field of natural science. 
The fact is that these two great fields, so far from being con- 
tradictory, are mutually helpful. In this way the revelation 
of God in nature has supplemented his revelation through 
Christ. Froma recent volume * by Professors J. M. and M. C. 
Coulter we quote the following true and timely words in which 
these eminent theistic scientists make, with the utmost con- 
fidence, a claim for the “scientific basis’ of the Christian 
faith: 


“Tt is the Christian claim that God has revealed himself to 
man not merely in the words of Scripture, but also in the 
works of nature. It would seem likely, therefore, that the 
revelation of Scripture is supplementary to that of nature, 
containing further, but not contradictory, revelation. It would 
seem more logical, therefore, to read our knowledge of nature 
into our interpretation of Scripture, than to interpret nature 
by our conceptions of Scripture. The frequent attempts to 
interpret natural phenomena by conceptions derived from 
Scripture have so often ended disastrously that a reversal of 
the process might be suggested. 


1“The Depths of the Universe.” 
2“Where Evolution and Religion Meet.” 


152 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


“The reason why so many scientific men believe in Chris- 
tianity is that they find it to be thoroughly scientific. Re- 
ligion is now known to be a universal human impulse. No 
race of men in any age of the world have failed to give expres- 
sion to this impulse. Any universal impulse must have some 
function. It is clear that the most masterful human passion, 
and therefore the most powerful human stimulus, is love. 
Everything that is finest in human character and conduct is 
in response to the stimulus of love. Our conclusion is that 
the most effective ideal for the religious impulse is love stimu- 
lating service. This is the ideal of the Christian religion, and 
it makes scientific men choose it as the only religion with a 
scientific approach, no matter how much theologians, and rival 
church organisations, and professing Christians may confuse 
the issue. Furthermore, since it has selected our most master- 
ful passion as the stimulus, it is the final religion. The great 
contribution which Jesus made to religion was his recognition 
of the master passion love as the most powerful stimulus to 
develop the best that is possible in man. It is no wonder that 
in the religion of Jesus, God is not only called Father, but 1s 
personified as Love. God is Love, that is, the master passion 
that can develop the best that is in us.”’ 


Should science tell me that my faith in God 
Is vain, since God is not, nor any need 
Of him, then would I banish from my creed 
All science, and take lessons from the clod— 
Which, dumb and dead, like Aaron’s budded rod, 
Blooms yet, by miracle, to flowery mead, 
Where, plain, as in the Holy Book, I read 
God’s power and goodness written on the sod. 


Not thus has science taught my grateful soul, 
By starry gleam or secret cell explored, 
Nor bid me dash my faith against a stone: 
She buoys my faith on all the tides that roll, 
And tells me, if to loftier heights I soared, 
In farthest skies I should find God alone! 
WILLIAM C. RICHARDS. 


CHAPTER SIX 


EVOLUTION AND GOD 





Cuaprer Six 
EVOLUTION AND GOD 


So conspicuous and influential among scientists during the 
last half of the nineteenth century was the doctrine of evolu- 
tion, and so dominant is it among scientists at the present time 
—and so bitterly and persistently has it been antagonised by 
theologians of the traditional school of thought from the days 
of Darwin to the present time,—that it seems proper and wise 
to single it out among the many doctrines of modern science 
and consider its bearing on theistic and Christian faith in our 
day. This scientific doctrine or theory of creation has come 
to be a storm centre of discussion in our day not so much 
between scientists and theologians as between the different 
schools of religious thought, the traditional and the modern, 
the former contending that faith in evolution is incompatible 
with faith in the teachings of the sacred Scriptures as to God’s 
work and method in the creation of the world and its inhabi- 
tants, while the latter contend that there is no incompatibility 
whatever between faith in evolution and faith in the Scripture 
account of creation if the Scriptures are properly interpreted. 
Our present task is not to discuss the truth or error of the 
doctrine of evolution—that is the work of men of science. We 
are concerned here and now simply and only with its bearing 
on faith in a personal God. 


I 
WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 


The scientific theory of evolution maintains that every- 
thing in the entire realm of nature, using that term in its 
largest sense, has come to be what it now is by process of 
development through the operation of natural law; that the 
past is the parent of the present and the present the offspring 

155 


156 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


of the past. The material or physical universe is composed 
of ninety-two or more primitive “elements,” which possess cer- 
tain inherent and unchangeable properties, or attributes, all of 
which operate in definite uniform modes which we call the 
laws of nature. These original primitive elements along with 
their properties and the laws according to which they act, have 
been discovered as yet only in part by man; but in so far as 
discovered they are definite, persistent and uniform in their 
operation. All things in nature are to be accounted for and 
explained by natural law. Everything that now exists is the 
effect of what preceded it and the cause of what shall follow. 
The lower and simpler in nature has evolved into the higher 
and more complex. Organic nature, including all forms of 
vegetable and animal life, evolved by process and power of 
natural law from inorganic matter. 

Scientific evolution in itself alone does not undertake to 
settle the question as to whether matter was created or is eter- 
nal, nor whether the uniform laws of nature are original and 
ultimate forces or are themselves the modes according to which 
some intelligent, personal Being accomplishes his purposes in 
and with and through nature. It deals simply and only with 
nature and natural law; assumes nothing beyond it. Although 
there are gaps and missing links in the long extended chain 
or process by which present existing things have been devel- 
oped, the evolutionist believes that nature’s laws, known or 
unknown, account for all things being what they now are. All 
forms of life, vegetable and animal, have come to be what 
they are by adaptation to environment, and the explanation of 
the progress upward towards higher forms of life is found in 
the fact that, in the struggle for life, the strongest and fittest 
to survive will tend to supplant the weaker. In the lower 
forms of life the possession of greater brute force may indicate 
that which determines what is fittest to survive; but the higher 
we ascend in the scale of life, the determining factors in the 
successful struggle for existence become, not physical and 
brute force but the possession of certain intellectual, social, 
ethical and spiritual qualities that vastly outweigh the advan- 
tages of superior brute force. 


EVOLUTION AND GOD 157 


1. Materialistic and Theistic Evolution Distinguished 


The difference between materialistic and theistic evolution is 
to be seen in the different answers given to the question as 
to whether “in the physical energies or forces which science 
supposes to have preceded life there is or is not to be found 
the true and adequate cause of life with all its forms, its in- 
finite possibilities, and its multitudinous activities?” “Darwin, 
it will be remembered, asked to be allowed to assume a first 
form, or a few forms, in order that he might show how the 
earth as it pursued its silent way through space, came to be 
tenanted with living beings and became the arena of all their 
works. But, simple as his request seemed, it was a tre- 
mendous assumption that he asked leave to make; for it meant 
that he wanted to start from an unexplained something, a 
mystery, a miracle—originated life, though how and why it 
had originated, what cause adequate to its production was 
lying behind, he did not know, and did not even presume to 
inquire. Indeed, he asked permission to posit not only the 
few forms whose being had just begun, but also the environ- 
ment within which they lived. He thus smuggled in two of the 
largest conceptions which can be formed by the mind of man 
(that of the origin of life and of the environment necessary 
to its development), the very conceptions which have per- 
plexed the race into belief in all the various cosmogonies. In 
so doing he concealed from himself (and doubtless from 
others also who were attracted by his scientific hypothesis) 
the distinction between a simplified cause and a simplified 
process.”’ So wrote one whose objection was not to evolution 
but to any and every statement of the doctrine of evolution 
that ignored God’s essential part in the process. 

It will thus be seen that the theory of evolution as first ad- 
vanced by Darwin was not a doctrine of creation, of the origin 
of life and other things, but it did have direct and fundamental 
bearing on the doctrine of providence, that is, on the ongoing 
of the world and the process of development in all its details. 
Darwin believed that the laws of nature, if fully understood, 
would account for and explain the development of all existing 


158 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


forms of life, but many who received the theory of evolution 
from him went far beyond him in the claims made for the 
theory—and this was done in two opposite directions. Mate- 
rialistic evolutionists claimed that this hypothesis explained the 
origin and development of all things out of eternally existing 
material atoms and made unnecessary the assumption of a 
personal God either as Creator or Preserver. Theistic evolu- 
tionists, on the other hand, found in this theory the most satis- 
factory explanation of the method according to which the one 
personal God had developed his created universe into what it 
now is. 

In all departments of science—in astronomy, in geology, in 
biology, for example—the theory of evolution has come to be 
accepted as true by the great body of well accredited scientists. 
As to whether this theory is true or not, they can best tell us 
who have studied astronomy, geology, and biology most care- 
fully and scientifically. In the meantime all devout theists will 
rest assured that if it turns out to be true—if it has been proved 
to be true, or shall in the future be proved to be true—it will 
simply mean that it is after this manner that the God of 
creation and providence has been working in the past and is 
still working. It is of interest and importance to us to know 
whether among the large number who accept the doctrine of 
evolution there is to be found a considerable number who 
believe that nature with all its laws is from God and under 
the government of an immanent, personal God. We do well 
to let witnesses speak for themselves and confess their faith. 
Every one who believes in God but does not himself believe 
in evolution should surely, it would seem, rejoice to find that 
any one who does believe in it is finding it a pathway to God. 
If men who believe in a personal God are, as indeed they are, 
coming to believe more and more in evolution, he will have 
an increasingly difficult and embarrassing task to perform who 
feels that it is his duty to prove that men who believe in 
evolution cannot consistently believe in God." 


1 This seems to be the task that certain religious leaders of our day 
have appointed themselves to accomplish, and some of these “defenders of 
the faith’ have indeed gone so far as to say that they who believe 


EVOLUTION AND GOD 159 


2. “Devolution” as Natural as Evolution 


In searching for examples and proofs of evolution in nature, 
and in their zeal to array these evidences of an upward devel- 
opment that has marked the past history of nature, inanimate 
and animate, scientists have not, it seems to us, duly recognised 
and emphasised the ever present natural tendency towards 
retrogression, the tendency in universal nature, whether ma- 
terial, animal, rational, or moral, to ‘‘backslide,’’ unless some 
intelligent force, some force controlled by mind, is put forth 
to retain the higher level gained. In other words the reversible 
process of evolution—call it devolution, or reversion, or retro- 
gression, or degeneration, or what we may—is just as pro- 
nounced and manifest a tendency of nature as evolution is, if 
indeed it be not even more manifest and potent. The improve- 
ments in our vegetables and fruits are not due to natural 
evolution but to the principle of evolution guided by mind— 
by such intelligence as that found, for example, in a John Bur- 
roughs. It takes a ceaseless force to keep the uphill movement 
of nature going, and the moment it anywhere ceases, the 
result is, not to remain stationary at the stopping-place, but 
instantly to start backward and down-hill. To ignore this 
“natural” tendency of everything “ascending”’ to stop and start 
downward is to obscure and fail to reveal the strongest evi- 
dence that evolution furnishes of its dependence upon an 
intelligent and moral force for continuous progress upward. 
In other words evolution is absolutely dependent upon some 
such potent intelligent and moral force as is implied in the 
theistic term God. In the due recognition of the fact to 
which we here call attention there should be entire agreement 
between science and religion, as a recent writer has shown in 
words which we quote: 


“The platform upon which science and religion can meet 
must be one broad enough to hold the scientist’s admission 
that the Bible’s pronouncement upon the motive-springs of 


in God and in evolution are a more harmful and pernicious influence in 
the realm of religion than they who are atheistic evolutionists ! 


160 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


human nature has been established beyond question by labora- 
tory-tests equal to his own. Moreover, it must have room for 
the church’s approval of the ‘method’ of science. The scien- 
tist’s method of observation, comparison, and verification by 
experiment accords with the genius of experiential religion. 
This method is itself the greatest treasure which science holds, 
for it is the key to the store-chambers of the universe. Upon 
such a platform of mutual concession, churchmen and scientists 
will find, together, “unity in essentials; in unessentials, liberty; 
charity in all things... .’ The mutual relations of evolution 
and religion, with this caution in mind, become plain. Reli- 
gion is dynamic; evolution is descriptive. If the description 
evolution gives is correct, the theory is helpful to religion; if 
faulty, it works harm by ungirding the ‘controls.’ . . . Human 
progress ceased long since as an automatic mechanical process 
—if it ever was that. It is now linked to man’s quest for God. 
As soon, therefore, as the quest for God ceases, man’s ‘prog- 
ress’ becomes chiefly a slide backward... . 

“Whenever man breaks his conscious relationship to God, so 
that his only relationship, felt and acknowledged, is the earth- 
relationship and the heritage of flesh, he starts spinning down 
the long spiral of evolution up which mankind has so painfully 
struggled towards conscious sonship with God. Even in the 
midst of apparent prosperity, disintegratior. may overtake his 
social institutions, while the individual passes from the order 
of moral vertebrates downward toward the moral invertebrate. 
Then, unless brought back to self consciousness by the chastise- 
ments of God or the invincible attraction of the Christ-man, 
he passes into the valley of the shadow of death, until that 
time, when, purified as by fire, the soul is nerved once more 
for the upward journey towards the Father of Lights.” * 


3. Moral Evolution 


There is something cruel and inhuman in materialistic evo- 
lution as expressed in the law of the survival of the fittest in 
the struggle for existence. It means that in the animal world 
selfishness reigns and the strong crush out and kill and devour 
the weak. Quite the opposite of this is the method of moral 
evolution as expounded and illustrated by Christ, who made it 


1 Marshall Dawson, “Nineteenth Century Evolution and After.” 





EVOLUTION AND GOD 161 


the law of his kingdom, indeed, that the morally fittest should 
survive, and not only survive but continually increase; but 
moral survival and increase means that the strong shall support 
the weak, the healthy shall serve the sick, the learned shall 
serve the ignorant, the holy shall serve and save the sinful, 
the higher shall serve the lower. 


“Animals become strong by crushing the weak; man be- 
comes strong by lifting the weak; the law of the woods is 
physical; the law of human life is spiritual. When man lives 
by the law of the jungle, he becomes a Rameses, or Nero, or 
Caligula. When man follows the law of the spirit, which is 
that of the human kingdom, he becomes a Moses, or St. John, 
or John Harvard, or William Wilberforce. When woman fol- 
lows the law of the animal kingdom she becomes a Jezebel, or 
Cleopatra, or Herodias, or Catherine de Medici. When woman 
follows the law of her own womanly life, she becomes a Queen 
Victoria, or Florence Nightingale, or Frances Willard. Ani- 
mals become beautiful by the expenditure of brute force in 
dealing out death to their species; man becomes beautiful by 
the expenditure of spiritual force in dealing out life to those 
who are weak.” * 


No one has recognised this difference between evolution 
and the survival of the strongest as exemplified in animal life 
and moral evolution as exemplified in the life of human beings 
better than did Huxley, himself an evolutionist, who wrote as 
follows: 


“The practice of that which is ethically best—what we call 
goodness or virtue—involves a course of conduct which, in 
all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the 
cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-asser- 
tion, it demands self-restraint; in the place of thrusting aside 
or treading down all competitors, it requires that the individual 
shall not merely respect but shall help his fellows. Its influ- 
ence is directed not so much to the survival of the fittest 
as to the fitting of as many as possible to survive. Laws and 
morals are directed to the end of curbing the cosmic process 


1J. W. Lee, “The Religion of Science,” pp. 292-93. 


162 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


and reminding the individual of his duty to the community, 
to the protection and influence of which he owes, if not exist- 
ence itself, at the least the life of something better than a 
brutal savage.” ) 


II 
THEISTIC EVOLUTION 


It has long been noted by those familiar with the writings 
of materialistic and agnostic men of science that they cannot 
altogether get rid of God. They must needs spell Matter and 
Force with capital letters to express their faith in the greatness 
of this “inscrutable Mystery,” this mysterious ‘Energy’ that 
pervades Nature; and they in a sense worship this great “Un-~ 
known.” But that is not theism. What Matthew Arnold’s 
God is in the realm of human nature and ethics—a Power not 
ourselves that makes for righteousness—that the evolutionist’s 
“God” is in the realm of physical nature—a power in matter 
which though not personal is not identical with matter, but — 
is continually making for life and consciousness and mind. 
And would not the Apostle Paul speak to those who worship 
inscrutable impersonal power in nature as their “unknown ~ 
God” words similar to those addressed to the men of Athens: 
“What, therefore, ye ignorantly worship as impersonal power, — 
that declare I unto you is none other than the personal God — 
that made the world and all things therein, even the Lord of 
heaven and earth, who dwelleth not in temples made with 
hands, but is he in whom we live and move and have our 
being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we 
are also his offspring.” 


1. Evolution as Interpreted by Theistic Scientists 


Over against the views of evolutionists who are materialists, 
atheists and agnostics, who find no place for a personal God 
in their theory of the universe of being, we place the views of © 
those who believe profoundly in God and divine Providence, 
and also believe that it is by a process of evolution that God 
has made the world to be what it is to-day. We now give 


EVOLUTION AND GOD 163 


some of the most eminent and well known of these theistic 
evolutionists an opportunity to state their own views. 

A well known scientist who was a theistic Christian evolu- 
tionist, and who found in the study of geology a sure pathway 
to God was the late Dr. Alexander Winchell. A generation 
ago he was regarded by many as almost radical in his advanced 
and progressive views, but he would be regarded as quite 
conservative to-day. Among the utterances found in his writ- 
ings, setting forth the views of a Christian evolutionist as to 
how the study of geology leads to faith in God, we quote the 
following as expressive of his mature convictions on this 
subject : 


“The great work of terrestrial preparation always implied 
the coming of man. He is correlated to the whole history of 
organised life, and cannot be contemplated except as the final 
link in the chain of being which stretches back through geologic 
eons. That the whole course of physical preparation looked 
toward man as its consummation is evidenced by the fact 
that every great revolution of the terrestrial crust constituted 
a forward step in the fashioning and furnishing of an abode 
for intelligent beings. The useful metals, elaborated and elimi- 
nated through the ages of geological activity, are suited ex- 
clusively to human needs and ends. The vast deposits of 
mineral coal laid by thousands of ages before the creation of 
man sustain no relations to any other than human existence. 
Thus man is a consummation foreshadowed through countless 
ages of organic and inorganic preparations. 

“Nature, reaching in man the completion of the work of 
organic development, marked the consummation of its creative 
progress by superadding to this most perfect organism an 
endowment of an intellectual and moral nature not vouchsafed 
to any other form of animal life. Thus man is presented to 
all intelligences as the final consummation of the long series of 
revolutions and advances whose records are written upon the 
pages of science. 

“We cannot resist the conviction that, in a world where 
almost everything presents some unmistakable and even antic- 
ipatory adaptation to promote happiness, and where so many 
things have no discoverable end if it be not to promote happi- 


164 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


ness, the attribute of benevolence must have actuated the 
Planner of existing arrangements. We regard the material 
world, therefore, as proof of the exercise of power, intelli- 
gence and beneficence. This conclusion is the result of a 
process of reason which we cannot evade or escape except by a 
total abandonment of grounds of inference which are ingrained 
in human nature and underlie all human thoughts and actions. 
The data of science, therefore, supplemented by the data of 
reason, establish the existence of such a Creator as is portrayed 
in our Scriptures.” * 


One of the strongest exponents of modern theistic evolu- 
tion, the late John Fiske, is the author of a volume titled 
“Through Nature to God,’ to which we have already re- 
ferred. It is a powerful argument in proof of the fact that 
if the premises upon which the doctrine of evolution is founded 
be true, then there not only may be but there must be a personal 
God to account for the always and everywhere prevalent be- 
lief that the human race has had in the existence of such a 
Being. One does not have to be a believer in all the implica- 
tions of the doctrine of evolution to find both intellectual and 
religious satisfaction in reading this interesting little volume. 
In no way, perhaps, can the ideas and ideals of a theistic 
evolutionist be presented to better advantage than by quoting 
a few paragraphs from this volume. As a protagonist of the 
doctrine of evolution Fiske affirmed four important corollaries: 
“a theistic basis for all cosmic phenomena; ethical principles 
an outcome from man’s social experience; man’s immortality 
a rational hypothesis from cosmic phenomena; religion the 
rational adjustment of man to his environment.” ? His faith 
in God and in evolution finds strong expression in the follow- 
ing words: 


“The doctrine of evolution properly understood, does not 
leave the scales equally balanced between materialism and 


_.1 These free quotations from Dr. Winchell’s volume titled “The Recon- 
ciliation of Science and Religion” involve abbreviations and occasional 
slight changes in phraseology, rendered necessary by the abbreviations 
mad | 


ade. 
2“Tife and Letters of John Fiske,” by J. S. Clark. 


EVOLUTION AND GOD 165 


theism, but irredeemably discredits the former, while it places 
the latter upon a firmer foundation than it has ever before oc- 
cupied. ... The ‘Principles of Psychology,’ published in 
1855 by Herbert Spencer, was the first application of the 
theory of evolution on a grand scale. Taken in connection with 
the discoveries of natural selection, of spectrum analysis, and 
of the mechanical equivalence between molar and molecular 
motions, it led the way to that sublime conception of the unity 
of nature by which the minds of scientific thinkers are now 
coming to be dominated. When we have once thoroughly 
grasped the monotheistic conception of the universe as an 
organic whole, animated by the omnipresent spirit of God, we 
have forever taken leave of that materialism to which the 
universe was merely an endless multitude of phenomena. 
Could we penetrate the hidden depths where, according to 
Dante, the story of Nature is bound with divine love in a 
mystic volume, we should find therein no traces of hazard or 
incongruity. From man’s origin we gather hints of his destiny, 
and the study of evolution leads our thoughts through Nature 
to God. . . . The advance of modern science carries us irre- 
sistibly to what some German philosophers call monism, but I 
prefer to call it monotheism. 

“The impetus of modern scientific thought tends with over- 
whelming force toward the conception of a single First Cause, 
or Prime Mover, perpetually manifested from moment to mo- 
ment in all the protean changes that make up the universe. 
This is practically identical with the Athanasian conception of 
the immanent Deity. . . . The general effect of this intellec- 
tual movement which we have described has been to discredit 
more than ever before the Latin idea of God as a power out- 
side of the course of nature and occasionally interfering with 
it. In all directions the process of evolution has been discov- 
ered, working after similar methods, and this has forced upon 
us the belief in the unity of nature. We are thus driven to 
the Greek conception of God as the immanent power working 
in and through nature without interference or infraction of 
law. . . . If on the one hand it is impossible for the finite 
mind to fathom the Infinite, on the other hand it is practically 
misleading to apply the term ‘Unknowable’ to the Deity that 
is revealed in every pulsation of the wondrously rich and 
beautiful life of the universe. For most persons no amount 
of explanation will prevent the use of the word ‘Unknowable’ 


166 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


from seeming to remove Deity to an unapproachable distance, 
whereas the Deity revealed in the process of evolution is the 
ever-present God without whom not a sparrow falls to the 
ground and whose voice is heard in each whisper of conscience, 
even while his splendour dwells in the white ray from yonder 
star that began its earthward flight while Abraham’s shepherds 
watched their flocks.” 


Referring to those who have more recently challenged the 
indisputable facts of science regarding evolution and have at- 
tempted to impose unwarrantable restrictions upon the liberty 
of research and utterance of teachers of science in institutions 
of higher learning, President Hibben of Princeton University, 
in his annual baccalaureate address, expressed his own faith 
in the following words: 


“T for one resent as an unwarranted presupposition the 
claims of those who take the position that if one believes in 
the facts of evolution he can no longer consistently adhere to 
belief in the Christian religion. It is a singular thing that there 
should be in present-day controversies the fear of recognising 
the facts of evolution when applied to the development in time 
of our physical frame, when it is so clearly evident that the 
moral and spiritual consciousness of the race has progressed 
by painfully slow stages. The history of the long years of 


religious experience contained in the Old Testament is a history 
of an evolution of the early crude ideas of God, ever taking — 
on more and more of a spiritual nature, from the original idea 


of a tribal God to that of the God of all races of mankind, 
until there appears the final consummation in the life and teach- 


ings and personality of Jesus Christ, in whom the divine ele-— 
ment in man came to its complete development and fully domi-_ 
nated his nature and his life. No one can deny that whatever 
may be the reason, which we cannot understand, God’s ways 


of manifesting himself have always been through the slow 
processes of nature. 

“Tt is no concern of ours whether the dust from which we 
have risen be animate or inaminate—the point is that we have 
risen. We can never be confused with the dust under our 


feet, or the animal which follows at our heels, or mocks at us 


from his cage. It is to me a matter of indifference how slowly 


the processes of nature may seem to advance from stage to 


EVOLUTION AND GOD 167 


stage of an ever progressive development. Judged as we finite 
beings must judge of time, the processes seem indeed incredi- 
bly slow, but let us not forget that behind the majestic pano- 
rama of the evolution of life upon our globe is the Eternal 
One in whose sight a thousand years are but as yesterday when 
it is passed and as a watch in the night.” 


The man of science who believes in God, who finds that 
faith in evolution is a pathway to God, is an ally and not an 
enemy of the Christian religion. This is no time to treat allies 
as enemies because they fail to utter our Shibboleth in pass- 
ing over Jordan. “To-day more than ever in the history of 
mankind,” says President Hibben, “‘we need the concerted 
effort of all allied forces of light in the struggle with the 
powers of darkness.” 

Dr. R. A. Millikan, of the California Institute of Technol- 
ogy, one of the most eminent of American men of science, 
from whom we have already quoted, says: 


“There have been just two great influences in the history of 
the world which have made goodness the outstanding charac- 
teristic in the conception of God. The first influence was 
Jesus of Nazareth; the second influence has been the growth 
of modern science and particularly the growth of the theory 
of evolution. . . . What is the meaning of existence? Is it 
worth while? Are we going anywhere? Jesus and modern 
science have both answered that question in the affirmative— 
Jesus took it as his mission in life to preach the need of the 
goodness of God. He came in an age which was profoundly 
ignorant of modern science. He used the terms in dealing 
with disease and evil which were appropriate to his day, the 
only terms which his audiences could have understood; but 
he saw a God who was caring for every sparrow and who was 
working out through love a world planned for the happiness 
and well-being of all creatures. 

“Similarly science in the formulation of the theory of 
evolution has the world developing through countless ages 
higher and higher qualities, moving on to better and better 
things. It pictures God, however you may conceive him, as 
essentially good, as providing a reason for existence and a 
motive for making the most of existence, in that we may be 


168 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


a part of the great plan of world progress. No more sublime 
conception of God has ever been presented to the mind of man 
than that which is furnished by science when it represents him 
as revealing himself through countless ages in the development 
of the earth as an abode for man and in the age-long inbreath- 
ing of life into its constituent matter, culminating in man with 
his spiritual nature and all his god-like powers.” * 


Dr. William W. Keen, emeritus Professor of Surgery in 
Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, has recently published 
a volume entitled “I Believe in God and Evolution.” It is 
exceptional to read anything from an English Scientist or man 
of letters or theologian referring to matters of science that 
fails to reveal either outspoken acceptance of the scientific doc- 
trine of evolution or an attitude of open hospitality towards 
it as a scientific hypothesis. 

Now it does not follow from these many “confessions of 
faith’ on the part of modern scientists that the doctrine of 
evolution is therefore true; but these statements do prove, if 
“testimonies” can prove anything, that men of the highest 
standing in the literary, ethical and scientific world can and do 
believe both in a personal God as revealed in the Scriptures 
and in the doctrine of evolution as expounded by modern sci- 
entists. What, then, let us ask, should be the Christian be- 
liever’s attitude towards this and all other scientific questions © 
that involve an interpretation of physical nature? | 

1 Among living scientists whose public utterances and published writings 
prove them to be outspoken believers in God and also in the scientific 
doctrine of evolution Professor Millikan enumerates the following: Charles 
D. Walcott, who, as head of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, 
President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 
and President of the National Academy of Sciences, occupies the most ~ 
conspicuous and influential scientific position in America to-day; Henry 
Fairfield Osborn, Director of the American Museum of Natural History © 
in New York City; Edwin Grant Conklin, Professor of Biology in Prince- 
ton University; John C. Merriam, President of the Carnegie Institution 
of Washington and America’s foremost paleontologist; Professor Michael — 
I. Pupin, of Columbia University, foremost of the scientific electrical ex- | 
perts of America; Professor John M. Coulter of the University of Chicago, 
most noted of American botanists; Professors A. A. and W. A. Noyes, 
foremost among American chemists; James R. Angell, distinguished psy- 
chologist and President of Yale University ; James H. Breasted of Chicago 
University, most distinguished of American archzologists; Thomas C. 


Chamberlain, Dean of American geologists; C. G. Abbott, Secretary of 
the National Academy of Sciences and eminent astronomer. 


EVOLUTION AND GOD 169 


2. The Proper Attitude of Christian Believers Towards 
Evolution 


“Fifty years ago,’ says Canon Barnes of Westminster, 
“the belief prevailed that because of some obscure flaw in the 
construction and government of the universe religion and sci- 
ence were hopelessly at enmity with each other, and it was 
therefore the religious thing to do to rail at science and scien- 
tists. Divines looked upon men of science if not with positive 
hostility, at least with wary suspicion; and many of the 
church leaders and champions of orthodoxy acted as though 
undue familiarity with scientists might tarnish the pure lustre 
of their orthodoxy and bring them under suspicion of sympathy 
with evolution. Men of science, on the other hand, conscious 
that they were giving their lives to the pursuit of truth, re- 
sented such treatments. However serious the differences be- 
tween Roman Catholics and Protestants in many points of 
faith and practice, they were united in their common opposition 
to Darwinism and evolution. Some twenty years after Dar- 
win’s ‘Origin of Species’ was published it had created such 
widespread interest and was commanding such a hospitable 
hearing at the hands not only of the scientific but the entire 
scholarly world that the Pope of Rome took alarm, and publicly 
denounced evolution as a system which is at once repugnant 
to history, to the traditions of all peoples, to exact science, to 
observed facts, and even to Reason herself—a system that 
degrades man himself to the level of the unreasoning brutes. 
And his words were matched by many others that were uttered 
by Protestant bishops, preachers and professors without num- 
ber. In the face of the severest and most persistent criticism 
and opposition from the Church that any scientific doctrine 
ever had, evolution has grown in the faith of men of science 
until it now as a theory practically dominates the scientific 
world.” 

The fact that creation is found to have been progressive, 
that unsuspected links unite its consecutive stages, that the 
tendency of science is to unveil a certain continuity in nature, 
leads the shortsighted, says Dr. G. P. Fisher, to ignore the 


170 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


supernatural altogether. They imagine that there is no need 
to call in God to explain nature except where breaks are met 
in the chain of mechanical causation. If it be true that the. 
plants in their multiplied species or kinds spring out of a 
few primitive germs, or out of only one, the evidence of fore- 
thought and will-power in the organisation of the vegetable 
kingdom is not in the least weakened. Nor would it be effaced 
if the spontaneous generation of the living from the lifeless 
were an ascertained fact of science. 

No theory of evolution clashes with the fundamental ideas 
of the Bible as long as it is not denied that there is a human 
species, and that man is distinguished from the lower animals 
by attributes which we know that he possesses. Whether the 
first of human kind were created outright, or, as the second 
narrative in Genesis represents it, were formed out of in- 
organic material, out of the dust of the ground, or were 
generated by inferior organised beings, through a metamor- 
phosis of germs, or some other process—these questions, as 
they are indifferent to theism, so they are indifferent as re- 
gards the substance of Biblical teaching. It is only when, in 
the name of science, the attempt is made to smuggle in a> 
materialistic philosophy that the essential ideas of the Bible 
are contradicted. As regards the idea of creation, or the 
origin of things by the act of God’s will, it is a point on which © 
science is incompetent to pronounce. It belongs in the realm 
of philosophy and theology. Natural science can describe the 
forms of being that exist, can trace them back to antecedent 
forms, can continue the process until it arrives at a point 
beyond which investigation can go no farther; then it must — 
hand over the problem to philosophy. To disprove creation — 
would require an insight into the nature of matter and of 
finite spirit such as no discreet man of science would pretend 
for a moment to have gained.* 


1Tt was more than a quarter of a century ago that Dr. G. P. Fisher of © 
Yale University gave utterance to the thoughts presented in the last two 
paragraphs, and it is not easy to express to-day in more satisfactory lan- 
guage the true Christian attitude towards evolution. See “Grounds of © 
Theistic and Christian Belief,’ pp. 344-56. This book has long been in — 
the course of study selected by the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal 


EVOLUTION AND GOD Lek 


That there is no conflict between Christian faith and the 
teachings of modern Science is the deep conviction of Dr. 
W. N. Rice, the eminent scientist of Wesleyan University. 
He declares that in the monotheism of Hebrew bards, God was 
always conceived of as immanent in nature. But the faith in 
the divine immanance which had glorified nature for the Jew 
was abandoned by popular theology, and nature became god- 
less because in the popular religious faith, God was seen only 
in the irregular, the abnormal and the extraordinary. With 
this notion, that the ordinary course of nature is independent 
of divine activity, and that God is to be seen only in breaches 
of natural law, only in the seeming gaps in the continuity of 
nature, the conflict of science and religion became inevitable. 
For the whole tendency of science is to fill the supposed gaps 
in the continuity of nature, which was, for the popular mind, 
to exclude God from the universe altogether. One by one, 
science annexed to the realm of law and order the districts in 
which lawless Personal Will had been supposed to reign. This 
left no place in the popular theology for the Divine Artisan. 
Men, however, who no longer saw God in the regular sun- 
rise and sunset, still saw Him in that which was rare and 
irregular. They crouched in superstitious terror at the mani- 
festation of divine anger in the eclipse, until science showed 
that the eclipse was only a less frequent manifestation of the 
same system of law which is shown in sunrise and sunset. 
Then the darkness of the eclipse became as godless as the 
darkness of night. Banished from astronomy, God seemed to 
find an asylum in the realm of meteorology, for the changes of 
weather seem at first sight sufficiently capricious for the most 
grossly anthropomorphic deity. But, when the coming storm 
came to be predicted while as yet not even “a little cloud like 
a man’s hand” could be seen, the God of tempest became as 
superfluous as a God of sun or moon—God was needed only 
to account for things unnatural and extraordinary. 


Church and of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, for the young 
ministers of these two churches. It may be supposed, therefore, to repre- 
sent a view of evolution or a mental and religious attitude towards this 
scientific doctrine which the Bishops of these churches approve as alto- 
gether sane and safe. 


172 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


The tendency of science to close up the seeming gaps in 
the continuity of nature has found its supreme manifestation 
in the development of the doctrine of evolution. The nebular 
theory showed that there was no breach of continuity in the 
origin of planets; the evolutionary geology showed that there 
was no breach of continuity in the development of the earth’s 
physical features; and the evolutionary biology showed that 
there was no breach of continuity in the origin of new species, 
and suggested, on the ground of analogy, the probability that 
there was no breach of continuity in the origin of life itself. 
It was, indeed, in this stopping of the gaps in which alone the 
popular theology found the manifestation of God that science 
caused the agony of terror with which the theory of organic 
evolution was regarded for two decades or more after the pub- 
lication of “The Origin of the Species.’ The obvious goal 
to which the analogies of scientific thought are leading us, is 
the belief that the series of evolutionary changes which we see 
stretching backward into the remote past and forward into the 
indefinite future, has neither beginning nor end; that creative 
Power and creative Intelligence have been eternally immanent 
in an eternal universe. I cannot help thinking that Christian — 
Theology will be the gainer by the acceptance of such a view.* 

There is every reason to believe that John Wesley would 
have been an open-minded student of the modern doctrine of 
evolution if it had been presented in his day as a method 
according to which God has created the world and developed it, 
through its inorganic and organic forms, into what it now is. 
It has been claimed that John Wesley was an evolutionist 
before Darwin. The following statements made by him in- 
his article titled “A General View of the Gradual Progression 
of Beings,’ are quoted in justification of this claim. After 
speaking of “the ostrich with the feet of a goat which unites 
birds to quadrupeds,” he says: “By what degrees does Na- 
ture raise herself to man? . . . How will she rectify this head 
that is always inclined toward earth? How change these paws 


1See ‘Christian Faith in an Age of Science,” pp. 314-318, from which — 
the statements in these two paragraphs are culled and presented here in 
condensed form. 


EVOLUTION AND GOD 173 


into flexible arms? What method will she make use of to 
transform these crooked feet into skilful and supple hands? 
Or will she widen and extend this contracted stomach? In 
what manner will she place the breasts and give them a round- 
ness suitable to them? ‘The ape is this rough draft of man, 
this rude sketch, an imperfect representation which never- 
theless bears a resemblance to him, and is the last creature 
that serves to display the admirable progression of the works 
of God. ... But mankind have their graduations as well 
as other productions of our globe. There is a prodigious 
number of continued links between the most perfect man and 
the ape.” 

The time is long since past when faith in a personal God as 
Creator and Governor of all things must be regarded as incom- 
patible with faith in evolution as the method and process by 
which things have come to be what they now are. The truth 
of evolution as a scientific theory for explaining the existing 
order of things cannot be settled by dogmatic theology or 
by an appeal to the Book of Genesis. This modern theory may 
be called in question and denied by one who believes that the 
world, with all its existing forms of life, was created in six 
literal days. But faith in evolution can no longer be regarded 
as atheism, seeing that the theistic evolutionist believes that 
evolution rather than instantaneous creation is the method ac- 
cording to which God has worked in the past and is still work- 
ing. Many of the strongest and most devout of present day 
Christian theists found in all the churches not only believe in 
evolution but believe that the theory of evolution adds greatly 
to the strength of the arguments drawn from the created 
universe to prove the existence of a personal God and the 
power and wisdom of Him who preserves and governs all 
created things. 

Strauss, the famous German critic, once referred to Darwin 
as “the man who drove the miraculous out of the universe.’’ 
“But did he?” retorted an English Archbishop. ‘Did he drive 
out anything but a shallow interpretation of the miraculous? 
When Jesus said, ‘My Father worketh hitherto and I work,’ 
did he not assert the miracle of continuous creation?” “Where 


174 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Science begins, faith ends,” said one who thought he found 
in the scientific study of nature a path that leads not to but 
away from God. But he represents, as we have already shown, 
a type of scientist who is growing less numerous every day, 
and less confident in his no-faith. On the contrary, “in the 
light of science we now see,” says Dr. Gwatkin, “that the 
world is not a machine made once for all by some great en- 
gineer’s hand from outside, but an organism slowly developed 
by a power working from within.” While nature, said Charles 
Kingsley, ‘looks to many like a series of accidents, it is really, 
if the doctrine of evolution be true and be rightly interpreted, 
a series of special providences of Him without whom not a 
sparrow falls to the ground, and whose greatness, wisdom 
and perpetual care I never understood as I have since I became 
a convert to the theory of evolution.” 

From Dr. S. Parkes Cadman’s luminous discussion of the 
modern attitude towards preachers and preaching, found in 
his volume titled “Ambassadors of God,’ I quote (in some- 
what condensed form) words which I think well describe 
what may be regarded as the present attitude of the modern 
Christian scholarly world towards the scientific doctrine of 
evolution : 


“As a theory of causation, evolution is meaningless; as a 
theory of methods, it is harmless; as a working hypothesis, 
it has been excelled, if at all, only by that of gravitation. 
He is the sagacious minister of the Gospel who leaves science 
to the scientists, while he prepares himself as best he can for 
the propagation of sacred truths which science can never suc- 
cessfully controvert. Thinking men and women everywhere 
have learned the unforgettable lessons that what is truly reli- 
gious is finally reasonable and that scientific gains must be sub- 
ordinated to moral aims, lest we all perish. Of all the theories 
science has put forth, that of evolution is the most capable of 
being reconciled with Revelation. The Christian Faith is 
bound to take unto itself the verified wonders of creation, 
which are resonant with the goodness and wisdom of Deity. 
Whatever makes life more rational, and therefore more truly 
divine, should be a part of the praise which the Church offers 


EVOLUTION AND GOD 175 


to her Lord. Why then was not the idea of progressive 
development ‘baptised into Christ’? The assertion that the 
several endowments of sentient existence, originally breathed 
into one or more primordial substances, were ceaselessly urged 
onward toward higher existence had nothing in it essentially 
opposed to Christian truth. Renewal, growth, fertility, con- 
tingent perfectibility—-what are these but spiritual terms im- 
ported into the natural world?—terms with which the New 
Testament abounds at every turn. Here, as it impresses me, 
is a unique opening for the attachment of the hypothesis of 
progressive development to the highest interests of the race.” 


There are many “ambassadors of God’? who feel as Dr. 
Cadman does concerning evolution as it is related to Christian 
faith. And there is special reason why on this subject we 
should let ministers of the Gospel as well as scientists declare 
in their own words what they think and feel. The following 
makes a fitting close to these quotations: 


“Since the day that Jesus Christ came to tell us of the love 
and forgiveness of God and to seal his revelation with his 
life and death,” says Dr. Carl S. Patton, “I do not know of 
any expansion that has come to our idea of God, equal to that 
brought by evolution. For when you get God inside his world, 
that means that God’s forms of revelation are many; and that 
in addition to the Bible no art, no science, no religion, no 
anything that has blessed and helped mankind, has ever come, 
except from and by the inspiration of this indwelling spirit 
of the infinite God, who lives and moves in all things. Nature 
is the garment of ‘God, law is the voice of God, conscience 
is the word of God, man is the living temple of God. Do 
what we will, be what we will, we can never escape from the 
presence of God. He is with us and in us. We have our 
daily being in him. The supreme contribution of evolution 
to human thought is not the solution it offers of a few riddles 
of the physical world, and the light it throws on some dark 
spots in the history of the earth and man, but the way _it 
makes us feel at home with God and makes him real to us, and 
floods both the whole long past of the race and the depths of 
Our own spirits with his presence.’ * 


1“Religion in the Thought of Today,” pp. 39, 40. 


176 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


No poem of recent origin, bearing incidentally on the doc- 
trine of evolution, has attracted more attention than that by 
W. H. Carruth, titled “Each in His Own Tongue.’ It is as 
follows: 


A fire-mist and a planet, 

A crystal and a cell, 
A jelly fish and a saurian, 

And caves where cavemen dwell; 
Then a sense of law and beauty, 

And a face turned from the clod,— 
Some call it Evolution, 

And others call it God. 


A haze on the far horizon, 
The infinite tender sky, 
The rich ripe tint of the corn-fields, 
And the wild geese sailing high,— 
And all over the upland and lowland 
The charm of the golden rod,— 
Some of us call it Autumn, 
And others call it God. 


Like tides on the crescent sea beach, 
When the moon is new and thin, 
Into our hearts high yearnings 
Come welling and surging in,— 
Come from the mystic ocean 
Whose rim no foot has trod,— 
Some of us call it Longing, 
And others call it God. 


A picket frozen on duty, 
A mother starved for her brood, 
Socrates drinking the hemlock, 
And Jesus on the rood; 
And millions who, humble and nameless, 
The straight, hard pathway plod,— 
Some call it Consecration, 
And others call it God. 


CHAPTER SEVEN 


THROUGH MAN TO GOD 





CHAPTER SEVEN 
THROUGH MAN TO GOD 


We have been travelling through nature up to nature’s God. 
It is not, however, in the physical universe that we find the 
surest path that leads to God. ‘This surer and better path is 
found in the intellectual and moral world of personality. It 
is in man’s knowledge of himself and other human beings 
that his knowledge of God has its deepest roots and reaches 
its most assuring heights. The personality of man and the 
personality of God stand or fall together, and are both funda- 
mental articles in the faith of theism. Pantheism and materi- 
alism deny the personality of God, but they likewise deny real 
and true personality to man. Having reasoned from nature 
up to nature’s God, we come now to higher ground and reason 
from human nature up to human nature’s God. 

“Tt is characteristic of Christianity in particular,’ says 
Professor Ellwood, “that it throws its emphasis upon the 
human in religion rather than upon the non-human. It finds 
its revelation of the divine in the highest human. It finds, in 
other words, God in man, without denying, however, that God 
is in nature also.” 

“In order to know the way which leads to God and to take 
it with certainty, we have no need of foreign aid but of our- 
selves alone. As God is above all, the way which leads to 
him is neither distant, nor outside of us, nor difficult to find. 
The Kingdom of God is within us... If any one asks 
of me, What is the way? I answer that it is in the soul of 
each and the intelligence which it encloses.” Thus wrote 
Athanasius, the maker and champion of “‘orthodoxy”’ in the 


- fourth century of the Christian era. 
179 


180 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


I 
MAN’S KINSHIP TO GOD 


The Truth in God’s breast 

Lies trace upon trace on ours impressed: 
Though he is so bright, and we so dim, 

We are made in his image to witness him. 


In these words Robert Browning has stated not only the fact 
of our kinship to God but the purpose of it—that we may 
“witness him’’ who has done for us what he has done for no 
other earthly creature in that he made us to bear his own 
image. Our present task, then, is to find out in what respect 
man’s nature and attributes are a revelation of his Creator. 


1. The Divine in Man and the Human 1n God 


In Genesis we read: “And God said, Let us make man in 
our image, after our likeness. . . . And God created man in 
his own image, in the image of God created he him... . 
In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God 
made he him.” These words invite us to study not only 
the divine in man but the human in God. If God made man 
in his image, there must be something that is divine in man. 
If human beings bear the image of God, there must be some- 
thing that is human in God. There are elements and attributes 
in the nature of God that are so essentially divine that they 
cannot be conceived of as belonging to man; and there are 
elements and attributes in the nature of man so essentially © 
human and finite that they cannot be conceived of as belong- 
ing to God. But there are other elements and attributes that 
are common to both God and man—the difference, as they are 
found respectively in God and man, being one of degree 
and not of kind. The divine Self-Existence, Fatherhood, 
Sovereignty, Eternity, Omnipresence—these are properties 
of the infinite Creator which cannot be imparted to, or pos- 
sessed by, man, the finite creature. For man to possess these — 
elements and attributes in his nature would mean that he had 
ceased to be finite and human. On the other hand, a material 


THROUGH MAN TO GOD 181 


body, physical appetites, human frailties and limitations, de- 
pendence, and the like are elements and attributes of humanity 
that cannot be possessed by the Infinite God. But God and 
man are alike possessed of natures and attributes that are 
defined as spiritual, moral, rational. Both are alike possessed 
of mind or intellect which thinks and knows; of heart or 
emotion which feels and loves; of will or volition which 
chooses and determines; of moral consciousness or conscience 
that apprehends and guides in matters of right and wrong. 
These are the attributes which are shared in common by God 
and man, and which serve to define that nature in the image of 
which man was created. These serve to point out the path 
along which we must travel if we approach “through man to 
God.” 

Dr. George A. Gordon, of Boston, some time since pub- 
lished a notable volume titled ‘“Through Man to God,” which 
emphasises the superiority of this line of approach over that 
of physical nature. ‘There are,” he says, “but two ways of 
approach to the character of the infinite: cosmic nature and 
man. It is true that these exist together in a kind of sacra- 
mental union. It may seem that in any attempt to regard them 
as opposites there is a violation of the great law, what God 
hath joined together let no man put asunder. Still they stand 
to each other as higher and lower, and they speak a different 
word concerning the mystery that is within them and behind 
them. Some years ago John Fiske published an interesting 
_ book under the title “Through Nature to God.’ Many men 
whom I honour found light in that book. When I read it, 
I felt that my convictions were fundamentally opposed not 
so much to the isolated ideas of the book as to the plan ex- 
pressed in its title. The title of my book originated in this 
fundamental opposition to Mr. Fiske’s plan. “Through Man 
to God’ is the expression that sums up my conception of the 
heart and soul of Christianity.’’ Weare not ourselves “funda- 
mentally opposed,” as is Dr. Gordon, to either the title or the 
argument of John Fiske’s book, “Through Nature to God’’; 
nevertheless, we are at one with Dr. Gordon in thinking that, 
while travelling “Through Man to God,” we are journeying 


182 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


along a safer, surer, higher and more luminous pathway than 
when we are travelling “Through Nature to God.” As a 
matter of fact, however, “Through Nature to God,” as John 
Fiske uses that term, includes “Through Man to God.” 

Dr. Lynn Harold Hough has expressed in a unique and 
original manner the fact of God’s creation of man in his own 
divine image. We quote his words :— 


“We meet the adventurous God first when we think of crea- 
tion; and the more we think of it the more astonishing creation 
is. The wonderful thing about creation is the making of 
people. There is nothing especially exciting about making a 
tree. The tree can never defy you. There is nothing espe- 
cially dramatic about making a stone. The stone is helpless 
in your hands. But the minute you make a person you have 
made a possible foe. A person can love back; he can also 
hate back. And when you have a world full of persons you 
are in danger of a world-wide mutiny. The method of crea- 
tion does not change all this. You can have all the millen- 
niums you need for the most dignified unfolding of implicit 
potencies. The fact remains that when personality emerges 
and self-conscious will has come to be, the curtain is ready to 
rise upon a scene packed with thrills. The God who took all 
the risks of creation was the most amazing adventurer of 
whom we can conceive. 

“A sculptor is in a sense an adventurer; he puts his very 
soul into the marble. But a father is more of an adventurer, 
for he is responsible for the existence of a being who may 
break his heart. The great Father God ran the risk of in- ~ 
finite heart-break for the sake of the hope of infinite loving | 
companionship. He took risks which are so vast and so 
far-reaching that they are simply beyond the range of our 
thought. Now the moment you begin to think of the God 
of creation in this fashion he begins to come within the range 
of our sympathetic understanding. In our own small way 
we have had experiences which are parallel to this. We can 
find a platform upon which to stand in order to speak to 
such a God. And it is a mistake to call this sort of thinking 
anthropomorphic. That is getting the actual situation upside 
down. The things we have been saying have their real con- 


THROUGH MAN TO GOD 183 


nection with that flash of biblical insight in which it is said that 
God created man in his own image.” * 


2. Anthropomorphism 


Anthropomorphism is a theological term which signifies the 
representation of God as if he were a man; and more par- 
ticularly as if he were possessed of a human body with its 
physical properties and limitations. By unduly emphasising 
these latter qualities in thinking and speaking of the Divine 
Being, anthropomorphic representations and conceptions of 
God may become low and debasing. But if kept within due 
limits this method of referring to God is proper and right in 
that it is impossible for us to conceive of God as a person 
without attributing to him the essential qualities of person- 
ality as we find them exhibited in men. If God is to be un- 
derstood by us when he speaks, he must speak to us in the 
language of earth. The entire Bible, says Dr. W. B. Pope, is 
pervaded by what is called anthropomorphism and anthropop- 
athy. The former term gives a name to the condescension 
of God in seeming to take a human form and human attributes, 
being the style adopted by the Almighty when he speaks and 
acts asaman. The latter term includes also the peculiar affec- 
tions of man, not excepting some that belong to his infirmity, 
such as hope and suspense. Not that the reality does not 
correspond. The Supreme gives us indeed a true representa- 
tion of himself; but it is a revelation that is adapted especially 
to our world, that it may be understood by us men. God 
reveals himself and his will to man as one made in his own 
image and permits him to infer the perfection in his Maker 
of what in himself is imperfect. God speaks to man as the 
finite copy of his infinite Self. Personality, power, good- 
ness, truth, love, are reflections in us of his image; realities in 
us corresponding to realities in him. “He that planted the 
ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not 
see?’ This is the poetry of anthropomorphism; but it teaches 
the profound truth that we are transcripts from an eternal 
_ Archetype, after which we are refashioned by being con- 
1“The Productive Beliefs,” pp. 29, 30. 






184 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


formed to the ‘‘Image of the invisible God,” the Son of God 
incarnate, ‘“‘the Firstborn of every creature.” * 

Not nature, then, but human nature is God’s best revealer. 
Can the house which you have built and which you live in, be 
it ever so richly and artistically furnished, tell your guest the 
whole of your character? No; there is in that house at best 
only a hint of your soul—the highest and best that is in you 
remains unrevealed. But your own child, that shares your 
nature and bears your image, who has lived and communed 
with you and not only knows your mind and heart but repro- 
duces them in his own thoughts and loves, whose will and con- 
science reflect your own ethical ideals and character—he can 
truly and fully reveal you. This material universe is God’s 
house, and there are indeed many beautiful and wonderful 
things in it that tell us that its Maker and Builder is God. 
But “the mind and heart and soul of our Eternal Host, the — 
inmost character of the Infinite, can be revealed to man only 
by and through man. Only the men who live in the thought 
of God, who behold with unclouded vision his moral integrity, 
who dwell in the consciousness of his loving-kindness, who rise 
up into strength under the inspiration of his Spirit—only they 
can reveal the intellect, the conscience, the heart, the deep soul, 
the eternal humanity, of our God.” The human soul alone 
can reveal to us the human God; and where man fails in 
love, God fails in a vehicle for the perfect revelation of him- — 
self. It is through the mind of man that we learn that God 
has a mind and what the mind of God is; it is through the | 
heart of man that we learn that God has a heart; through the 
will of man that God has a will; through the conscience of — 
man that God has a moral nature. It is because there is divin- 
ity in man and humanity in God that both could meet in perfect _ 
unison in Jesus Christ, the God-man. It is because Jesus 
was so genuinely and perfectly human, not less than because 
he was truly divine, that he has been the most perfect re- 
vealer of God to Man. 

Although “Through Man to God” is an entirely proper, and 


1See Pope’s “Compendium of Christian Theology,” from which this 
definition of Anthropomorphism is largely taken. 


THROUGH MAN TO GOD 185 


even necessary, approach to a human interpretation of the 
Divine Being, there are dangers of misinterpretations growing 
out of the analogy no less than helpful suggestions found in 
it. It is well therefore that we heed the warning found in 
the following words of Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick :— 


“Few passages in Scripture better deserve a preacher’s at- 
tention than God’s accusation against his people in the 5oth 
Psalm: “Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as 
thyself.’ The universal applicability of this charge is evident 
to any one who knows the history of man’s religious thought. 
If in the beginning God did make man in his own image, man 
has been busy ever since making God in his image, and the 
deplorable consequences are everywhere to be seen. From 
idolaters, who bow down before wooden images of the divine 
in human form, to ourselves, praying to a magnified man 
throned somewhere in the skies, man has persistently run God 
into his own mould. To be sure, this tendency of man to think 
of God as altogether such a one as ourselves is nothing to be 
surprised at. 

“The idea that God must be approached by stated ceremonies 
came directly from thinking of God in terms of a human 
monarch. No common man could walk carelessly into the 
presence of an old-time king. There were proprieties to be 
observed. There were courtiers who knew the proper ap- 
proach to royalty, through whom the common folk would 
better send petitions up and from whom they would better look 
for favour. So God was pictured as a human monarch with 
his throne, his sceptre, his ministering attendants. Here on 
earth the priests were those courtiers who knew the effectual 
way of reaching him, by whom we would best send up our 
prayers, through whom we would best look for our salvation. 
Max Nordau is not exaggerating when he says: ‘When we 
have studied the sacrificial rites, the incantations, prayers, 
hymns, and ceremonies of religion, we have as complete a 
picture of the relations between our ancestors and their chiefs 
as if we had seen them with our own eyes.’ 

“Our anthropomorphism, however, reaches its most danger- 
ous form in our inward imaginations of God’s character. 
How the pot has called the kettle black! Man has read his 
vanities into God, until he has supposed that singing anthems 


186 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


to God’s praise might flatter him as it would flatter us. Man 
has read his cruelties into God, and what in moments of vin- 
dictiveness and wrath we would like to do to our enemies, we 
have supposed the Eternal God would do to his. Man has read 
his religious partisanship into God; he who holds Orion and 
the Pleiades in his leash, the Almighty and Everlasting God, 
before whom in the beginning the morning stars sang to- 
gether, has been conceived as though he were a Baptist or a 
Methodist, a Presbyterian or an Anglican. Man has read his 
racial pride into God; nations have thought themselves his 
chosen people above all his other children because they seemed 
so to themselves. The centuries are sick with a god made in 
man’s image, and all the time the real God has been saying, 
‘Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thy- 
Belliy 


II 
THROUGH PSYCHOLOGY TO GOD 


The fact that man bears the image of God, and that this 
image is found not in his visible, physical body, but in his 
inner spiritual nature, makes it fitting that we turn to psy- 
chology and travel through human psychology to God. We 
have gone far enough to find that if we can reason “through 
nature to God,” and find in the physical universe the material 
for an argument to prove the existence of an infinite spiritual 
Being, much more safely and soundly can we reason “through 
human nature to God.” If nature proves something about 
God, human nature proves a great deal more about him. So 
far in this chapter we have treated man in a general way as a 
person, a self-conscious spiritual being, bearing the image of 
his Creator; we have studied him objectively, so to speak. We 
propose now to study him subjectively, and to this end analyse 
his spiritual nature. Psychology is a subjective study of 
man—the study of man as he is within himself—and this will 
furnish us with an approach to God at once easy and alto- 
gether trustworthy. 


1“Christianity and Progress,” pp. 219-221. 


THROUGH MAN TO GOD 187 


1. Human Consciousness 


The contents or materials of psychology are derived through 
self-consciousness from the mind thinking about itself, think- 
ing about its own thoughts and feelings and volitions, and 
from studying mind, emotion and will as one sees them in ex- 
ercise and manifested in others. Consciousness is the basis of 
all our knowledge about ourselves and is the inner ‘‘clearing 
house” of all our knowledge about other things both physical 
and spiritual. “I think, therefore I am,” says the philosopher. 
But I may just as truly say, “I love, therefore I am,” and I 
may be so much in love as to be more conscious of loving than 
of thinking. I may also no less truly say, “I will, therefore 
I am,” and in the act of putting forth a volition, my con- 
sciousness is, if anything, more intensely active than in think- 
ing or loving. But not only do I come to know myself in 
and through consciousness ; but through it I come to know and 
distinguish the “not-self’’ as well as the “‘self,’—the physical 
as something distinct from the spiritual. 

The citadel of theism, says Dr. George P. Fisher, is in the 
consciousness of our own personality. Within ourselves God 
reveals himself more directly than through any other channel. 
Out of man’s perception of his own personal attributes arises 
the belief in a personal God. Nature cannot give that which 
she does not herself possess. Only a personal Power above 
nature can account for self-consciousness in man. The spark 
of divine fire is deposited in nature; it is in nature, but not of 
it. But the consciousness of God enters inseparably into the 
consciousness of self as its hidden background. The descent 
subjectively into our inmost being is at the same time an ascent 
objectively to God. All profound reflection in which the soul 
contemplates its own being brings us to God, in whom we live 
and move and have our being.* 


1 See “Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief.” 


188 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


2. Body and Spirit 


The first result of an appeal to self-consciousness is the 
recognition of man’s twofold nature. I am conscious of a 
material body and an immaterial soul or spirit. But there is 
a difference. My body is mine, but it is not I; it is not identical 
with me. I make a distinction between myself and my body. 
Yet I am one thing, not two things. In the unity of my 
spiritual being is a thinking mind, a feeling heart, and a will- 
ing will, but my body with its head and hands and feet, its 
bones and blood and flesh, is quite another thing. I do not 
make any distinction between myself and my spirit. My 
spirit is not only mine, but it is 1; itis me. The true ego is the 
spirit, not the body. The body exists for the spirit, not the 
spirit for the body. From consciousness we learn that, while 
matter may condition mind, it does not cause mind; but mind 
and spirit, on the contrary, act upon matter not only in a con- 
ditioning way but in a causative and controlling way. Spirit. 
and mind, therefore, represent the dominant and greater 
reality. If, now, my consciousness reveals the reality and 
the dominance of the spiritual in the finite world in which 
I move and have my being, then why should not the same be 
true of the infinite world of which my finite world is only 
a part? Reasoning by analogy, then, psychology furnishes an 
irresistible argument in favour of the reality and dominance in 
the universe of an infinite Spirit. | 

But psychology not only reveals the existence of spirit as’ 
distinct from matter; it goes farther as already indicated, 
and reveals spirit as composed of intellect, emotion, and will, 
each and all of which phases and functions of the finite spirit 
will furnish parallel pathways to a knowledge of God, the 
infinite Spirit, who, being personal like ourselves, must be 
possessed of mind and heart and will just as we are. 


3. Through the Intellect to God 


Uppermost among the attributes that distinguish and sepa- 
rate man from all other forms of creaturely existence on our 
planet is the fact that he is a rational being and thinks. And 


THROUGH MAN TO GOD 189 


yet, although he alone thinks, reflects and reasons, he is in the 
midst of a rational world. He is surrounded by that which 
is intelligible, by things everywhere which require mind to in- 
terpret, and which, being interpreted by mind, become the 
material for that constructive work of the mind which we call 
reasoning. Reason is that faculty of the spiritual man that 
relates things to each other and combines them so as to build 
something intellectually larger and greater. It puts premises 
together and draws conclusions therefrom larger and greater 
than any one of the premises. A conclusion is the truth con- 
tained in two or more premises reduced to intellectual unity; 
and it becomes in turn a premise for combination with other 
premises looking and leading to a yet larger and greater con- 
clusion. Thus reasoning represents that function or exercise 
of the mind without which there can be no intellectual advance 
or progress in knowledge. From mind in man, the creature, 
we reason up to mind in God, the Creator; from evidences of 
mind in the thing made we infer mind in the maker, whether 
the maker be man or God. 

Some one has said that “man cannot think without think- 
ing God,” that God’s existence is involved in the very process 
of thought. Man’s very thoughts are in a sense beliefs con- 
cerning Deity, says Dr. Fairbairn, and his relations to the 
Deity and the Deity’s to him are such “that he can as little 
choose to be religious as to be rational; he is both, and both 
by the same necessity of nature.’ The human mind, by an 
irresistible necessity of its own being, seeks for causes for 
everything, and demands adequate causes for things. The 
origin of mind or spirit in the world demands a satisfactory 
cause to explain it. Matter cannot cause or explain mind. 
Spirit can come only from Spirit. There is no possible rest- 
ing place for the human intellect until a Being endowed with 
attributes sufficient to account for all things, and especially all 
things intellectual and spiritual, is assumed to exist. Man 
finds everything in the universe, from the tiniest atom to the 
limitless solar systems in infinite space, challenging thought 
and capable of intellectual interpretation; and in this act of 
interpretation he is thinking the thoughts of some mind that 


190 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


has been embodied in and impressed upon these things which 
call forth thought. Hence, when Kepler exclaimed, “O God, 
I think thy thoughts after thee!’ he was not only journeying 
through nature to God, but even more through mind and in 
telligence to God. 

Mind can interpret and explain rationally only that which 
comes from mind and reason. If thought did not make nature, 
thought could never interpret it, for nothing but the work 
of thought is intelligible to thought. But thought is the most 
distinctive attribute and exercise of personality; only in a 
person does it originate, and only by a person can it be un- 
derstood.* 

How an intelligible could be without an intelligence, both 
creative and receptive, is a thing which experience does not 
know and thought cannot conceive—for we are so constituted 
that we are bound to infer that the world of nature which none 
but a personal intellect can interpret, none but a personal 
intelligence could create. Experience and observation, says 
Principal Shairp, have forced upon the mind of all thoughtful 
naturalists, that, penetrate into nature whenever they may, 
thought has been there before them. If nature, therefore, is 
intelligible, if it is something that mind can and does inter- 
pret—and that it is intelligible and capable of rational inter- 
pretation is at the foundation of all science and philosophy— 
it must be related to and derive its intelligibility from a Per- 
sonal Intelligence, from an intelligent Person, adequate to 
account for all the marks of intelligence possessed by it. The 
intelligibility of nature, and the intelligence possessed by man 
that enables him to interpret nature must find their explana- 
tion in a common origin from one and the same Personality, 
a Personality which cannot be inappropriately designated as 
supernatural—superhuman—Divine. 


4. Through the Heart to God 


“Our hearts are restless until they find rest in Thee,” ex- 
claimed St. Augustine in an oft-quoted prayer that has found 
an echo in the heart of humanity. And if these words be 


1See Fairbairn, “Philosophy of Christian Religion,” p. 29. 


THROUGH MAN TO GOD 191 


the expression of a great truth, then it must be also true that 
one of the surest paths of approach to God, to his nature 
and character as well as to the fact of his existence, is through 
the heart with its emotions and desires. Indeed, it is through 
the heart rather than through the head that most men come first 
to believe in God. Faith is not the fruit of a purely intellectual 
process. “With the heart man believeth unto righteousness,” 
said one who understood well the psychology of the human soul 
and the philosophy of saving faith. Belief in God, for most 
men at least, does not lie at the end of a path of inquiry in 
which the motive is the desire to explore and explain the 
causes of things but it first manifests itself in the soul in 
a form in which feeling plays a more conscious and important 
part.than does intellectual reasoning. 

To say that God must be sought through the intellect and 
translated into the terms of the intellect as the only way, or 
indeed, as the best way, to find him, is to misplace the point 
of greatest emphasis and significance in religious experience. 
“The intellect has a great office in religion, and nothing which 
is in fundamental quarrel with it can be true. But God’s 
plans outrun the sweep of our minds, or they would not be his 
thoughts,” says Dr. W. H. Fitchett, “and the point at which 
God and man meet is that of the submitted will and the 
loving heart. God himself has intellect in infinite terms, but 
he is love; and it is in terms of love and at the point of love 
that God and man meet. Not the clever brain, but the loving 
heart best understands God. ‘Beloved,’ says John, ‘let us love 
one another, for love is of God, and every one that loves is 
born of God and knows God. He that loveth not knoweth not 
God; for God is love.’ In these simple words is hidden a 
profounder philosophy than Plato knew. When Paul wants 
to describe how and by what channels in our nature God re- 
veals himself to us, he says, ‘God who commanded light to 
shine out of darkness hath shined im our hearts to give the 
light of the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’ ”’ 
If God pours the sunshine of his love into human hearts, it is 
surely to furnish light to shine on the pathway that leads 
to him. 


192 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Desires and feelings are a no less real and important part of 
man’s real and true self than his thoughts and volitions. Most 
human beings can be influenced more effectively through the 
heart, by an appeal to their feelings and desires, than through 
the head by an appeal to reason and thought. Mankind is in 
a sense more conscious of feelings than of thoughts, of desires 
than of ideas. Whatever, then, would explain man, his 
origin, nature, and end, must explain and satisfy his heart, 
with its deep desires and feelings. Man’s heart was made 
to love, and the only thing that can satisfy love is something 
that can be loved and can love in return. Strictly speaking, 
we do not love things; we like things, but we love persons; 
we love those who can respond to love and love us in return. 

A conception of God that satisfies the head simply and not 
the heart, that answers the demands of reason but does not 
meet the desires and longings of the soul, is totally inadequate 
to meet man’s deepest needs. Heathen gods satisfy neither 
the head nor the heart. The gods of polytheism may be 
feared, but they are never loved. Pantheism, with its im- 
manent but impersonal deity, may appeal to the reason, at 
least of some, but it can never appeal to the heart of any man 
and evoke his love. Deism, with its distant deity, its tran- 
scendent ‘‘absentee God,” totally indifferent to man’s thoughts 
and feelings and doings, can never satisfy the heart of beings 
who crave, as mankind does, companionship and communion 
of soul with soul. Even Hebrew monotheism, with its lofty 
conception of duty and its emphasis upon God’s unity, spiritu- 
ality and personality, although incomparably more rational and 
satisfying than any other ancient conception of deity, was yet 
not adequate for all man’s needs of head and heart; and so God 
gave the needed fuller and final revelation in and through his 
incarnate Son. It is only when God is revealed as the Son 
reveals him, as a Father, and only as this revelation is made 
plain to man by the Son taking human form and becoming 
incarnate, that man’s heart is fully satisfied. It is because 
man’s deepest attribute is love, and because none but a God 
who is at once a loving and holy Father can satisfy that love, 
that the Christian revelation of God finds ready acceptance 


THROUGH MAN TO GOD 1938 


wherever it is fully presented to the heart of man. “God is 
your heavenly Father,” ‘God is love’’—this is the revelation 
of God that captures the heart of humanity. To know the 
Father is to love him; but they only know him truly who love 
him. Knowledge comes before love, but a higher and better 
knowledge comes after love. 

As Dr. Mansel has observed in his “Limits of Religious 
Thought,” those who lay exclusive stress on the rational proof 
of the existence of God derived from the marks of design 
in the world or from the necessity of supposing a first cause for 
all phenomena overlook the fact that man learns to pray before 
he learns to reason, and that he feels within him the con- 
sciousness of a Supreme Being and the instinct of worship be- 
fore he is capable of arguing from effects to causes, or of 
estimating the traces of wisdom and benevolence scattered 
through the creation. While it is true, as Dr. Fairbairn says, 
that “as man thinks of Deity, so he worships,” it is also true 
that worship is an expression more of man’s feelings than it is 
of his thoughts, and ministers more to the heart than it does 
to the head. Worship, therefore, whether it be viewed in its 
subjective aspect as an inner exercise of the spirit or in its out- 
ward expression and forms, is an approach to God through 
the feelings and an appeal to the emotional nature of man. 


5. Through the Will to God 


A yet higher evidence of man’s personality is found in his 
possession of free will. The essence of freedom is in the self- 
determining power of the will; and it is perhaps in the con- 
sciousness of this self-determining power that man becomes 
most conscious of his superiority over nature and of his kinship 
to God. Many things may influence the will, but nothing can 
cause or force it to any given volition while it remains free. 
In his thoughts and desires man is more or less passive and 
dependent on the conditions and circumstances that environ 
him; but in his volitions he is active and free, and within 
limits absolute and sovereign. Our conception of power is 
derived from volition, from the manner in which, by a deci- 
sion of our wills, we cause our bodies and other material things 


194 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


to do our bidding and serve our purpose. Our wills can cause, 
originate, create; and, by means of their power over physical 
nature, give us, as nothing else does or can, a conception of 
divine power, of God as Creator. Logically the intellect and 
the sensibilities, or knowledge and desire, must precede the 
volitions of the will and furnish motives to the will. Free 
will is not merely self-determining power; it is self-determin- 
ing power acting intelligently, rationally, with an end in view, 
and in harmony with certain moral qualities of the soul. 
For a will to act otherwise, to act arbitrarily, without refer- 
ence to these conditions, with no motive or end in view, is 
for it to be unmoral and irrational. Free will, then, as we 
have already stated, is, in a sense, the divinest thing in man, in 
that he may be said to transcend nature and approach Deity 
more truly in the exercise of free will and in the act of voli- 
tion than in anything else he does. 

Where did this subtlest and most marvellous power pos- 
sessed by man come from? From mindless matter? From 
something which is inert and motionless unless moved irre- 
sistibly from within or without? From other matter which, 
though always moving, can no more cease to move, or move 
otherwise than it does, than can inert matter cease to be inert? 
If life can come only from pre-existing life, and mind can 
come only from pre-existing mind, surely self-conscious free- 
will, which is the highest expression of life and the highest 
exercise of mind, can only come from a Being who is himself 
possessed of free will. : 

A true and lofty conception of man as a free moral agent. 
leads to a lofty conception of God; low and degraded views 
of man’s freedom make high and noble views of God im- 
possible. Pantheism and materialism both alike make free 
will impossible in man, and they lead to degrading if not 
impossible views of Deity. People who have long been ac- 
customed to an arbitrary and despotic government, where the 
imperious and sovereign will of one man has crushed into 
abject and servile obedience the wills of the people, and where 
the decrees of the sovereign have been dictated not by justice 
and love for his subjects but by unreasoning selfishness and 


THROUGH MAN TO GOD 195 


arbitrary power—such a people are very prone to interpret 
God from the point of view of sovereignty and give an 
exaggerated place to mere arbitrary power in their conception 
of God. The gods of such people are feared, but never loved. 

“It was doubtless the experience of human volition that first 
suggested a belief in a personal God,” says the author of 
“Christian Faith in an Age of Science,’ Dr. William North 
Rice. “The argument for the personality of God turns now 
chiefly on the manifestations in nature of something like the 
intellectual activities of man. The principle of causality 
forbids us to believe in an uncaused beginning. It compels us, 
therefore, to believe in the existence of something eternal 
and self-existent wherein lies the ground of all other existence. 
But the admission of an eternal and self-existent something 
leaves unanswered the question whether that something is un- 
intelligent or intelligent, a blind force or a free and moral per- 
sonality. The function of the argument from design is to 
establish the probability that the eternal self-existent some- 
thing is intelligent. ... The system of doctrine usually 
called pantheism denies personality, free will, morality, alike in 
man and in God. In the line of thought which we have fol- 
lowed, on the contrary, we have started with the personality 
of man, and at every stage have firmly held to the person- 
ality of God. Thus we find the ground of all existence in the 
will of a personal God.” All theists may not agree with Dr. 
Rice in thinking that the experience of volition first suggested 
the idea of a personal God, but they will doubtless all agree 
with him in the validity of the analogy and the argument by 
which he undertakes to prove from the free will of men the 
fact of personality and will in God. 

If, now, we are to reason from and through free will in 
man to the existence of an infinite and divine will in God, 
it is quite essential that our psychology and our theology shall 
define the human will in terms of a real and true freedom with 
conscious self-determining power. This neither materialism 
nor positivism nor pantheism can do. Even Calvinism, stand- 
ing as it does for so much that is true in theology, has yet so 
unduly emphasised and exaggerated the arbitrary and sover- 


196 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


eign Will of God in determining man’s destiny that it leaves 
little or no room for free will in man. In answering the 
question ‘Whose will decides whether an individual shall he 
saved or lost—that of the individual or that of God?” Calvin- 
ism answers ‘“‘the will of God’; all other types of theology 
answer, ‘“‘the will of the individual free agent.” If God has 
from all eternity unconditionally foreordained all things 
whatsoever come to pass, and this includes the volitions of 
men and angels—and such is the teaching of Calvinism—it 
is difficult to find a place for human free will to come into 
man’s life in any determinative way. To affirm that God by 
the arbitrary decision of his own will, before men were created, 
decreed that a certain portion only of those whom he would 
create should be saved and that all others should be lost, might 
fill the hearts of the elect with unspeakable gratitude because of 
his discriminating favour, but it could not fail to prove a repel- 
lent conception of God to the masses of men who could not 
know whether they were elect or not. 

To so define and magnify Will in the nature and attributes 
of God as to nullify and render impossible free will in man is 
to make it impossible to find in that which we call the will of 
man a pathway to God—and the argument to prove the exist- 
ence of a Person who possesses in an unlimited degree the self- 
determining power which man possesses in a limited degree 
falls to the ground. The modern Christian conception of 
God which has supplanted that of Calvinism places its em- 
phasis upon the Fatherhood and love of God and the self- 
determining power of free-will in man. While God possesses 
and exercises sovereign Will, yet back of his will are infinite 
wisdom and love; his will is always that of a holy and loving 
Father. To know and love and do the will of the Father in 
heaven is the highest act of the mind and heart and will of 
man. “Our wills are ours to make them thine.’ So wrote 
the poet, and no single sentence was ever perhaps penned by 
uninspired man that states a profounder truth than that 
sentence does concerning the human will as it is related to the 
divine Will. Man carries within his consciousness of free-— 
dom the consciousness of another free Will to whom he 


THROUGH MAN TO GOD 197 


owes obedience. This consciousness of the Divine Will re- 
veals itself in conscience. 


6. Through the Conscience to God 


In addition to intellect and feeling and volition, the psy- 
chological study of man’s nature in the laboratory of life 
and experience reveals a fourth element or faculty, that pre- 
supposes all these three but is different from each one of them; 
and is more than all of them. It is that by virtue of which 
man has a moral nature. We call it conscience. Theists re- 
gard it as the voice of God and the witness to God within the 
soul of man; and it requires, to make it possible for it to 
function in life, that there shall be an outward moral standard 
of right that shall be recognised as obligatory and authorita- 
tive by the conscience within. | 

What consciousness is to man as a thinking rational spirit, 
that conscience, the moral consciousness, is to man as ethical 
and rational. Conscience manifests itself in a recognition of 
the existence of a standard of right and an accompanying 
sense of obligation to bring conduct and character into con- 
formity to that standard. But conscience does not create the 
standard—it simply apprehends and recognises and enforces 
it. Discernment and discrimination are attributes and func- 
tions of the intellect, and the intellect is fallible. Accordingly 
the actual and practical standard of one man, or of any given 
group of men, having a social conscience, may and often does 
differ from the standard recognised by another man or group 
of men. But conscience is always,—in those at least who are 
conscientious, those in whom it has not by being long un- 
heeded become deaf or dead,—true to its recognised and ac- 
cepted standard. Whatever is recognised as the standard of 
right, conscience is that feeling, that faculty, that authoritative 
voice of the soul, that insists that it shall be obeyed. Diso- 
beyed, it smites the soul with a sense of guilt, from which 
there is no escape, except through penitence and pardon. 

This faculty of the soul, this immediate and imperious sense 
of “oughtness,” this “categorical imperative,” as Kant called 
it, belongs to man as man—is found in all men, civilised or 


198 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


uncivilised, educated or ignorant. It comes into being with 
man like mind as part of his equipment for life; it constitutes 
his moral nature which is not so much innate as connate, that 
is, something born with him, which awaits development, and 
its development is like the development of mind, is condi- 
tional on many things—on inheritance, on educa on social 
environment. These constitute the moral variables that char- 
acterise the manifestations of conscience as seen in different 
individuals and groups of men, but underneath all these vari- 
ables there is a “moral constant’”’ discernible alike in all; and 
however widely and variantly the standard of right may 
be interpreted by different individuals or groups or nations, 
there is discernible a moral constant, a common and universally 
accepted nucleus of moral truth, a moral ultimate, that is 
recognised by all men everywhere, and serves as the moral 
“common denominator’ for mankind. That makes possible 
not only social intercourse among and between all men, but 
the solution of moral problems in a common “clearing-house”’ 
where the reconciling and unifying of variable moral stand- 
ards is ever in process. Where, now, did this conscience of 
the race come from; and this ultimate standard of right, 
whence came it? There is but one rational explanation—it 
came from a moral source, and the only fitting name for that 
source is a personal God. 

Dr. Martineau has said that psychological ethics is peculiar 
to Christianity. In Christianity human nature, rather than 
nature, became the sole object of interest and investigation. 
The world existed for man’s sake; even the heavens were made 
to minister to man. The human soul was the one great object 
of the divine government. Naturally, therefore, Christian 
philosophy and ethics became deeply subjective and pene- 
tratingly introspective in their methods and aims. In Christian 
thought emphasis was ever laid on the law which is written in 
the heart. 


7. Through the Imagination to God 


There is no faculty of the human soul that is of more value 
in the discovery and the interpretation of God than the imag- 


THROUGH MAN TO GOD 199 


ination. It is a faculty which may be misused and abused, 
and when unchecked, unguided by wisdom, and carried to 
excess, it may easily be turned into unbridled fancy and lead 
the mind away from rather than towards truth and reality. 
But properly used it serves as the image-making power of the 
soul and as such it is one of the most valuable faculties with 
which man is endowed for finding truth and reality in every 
sphere of human knowledge. It was Napoleon who said that 
men of imagination rule the world. Not only must the mili- 
tary leader who has to plan his campaign of conquest and his 
line of battle be a man of imagination, but in the realm of 
science also imagination is, as Tyndall designated it, “‘the 
mightiest instrument of the physical discoverer.” ‘‘The 
hypotheses which precede experiment could never be framed 
without imagination.” All the great inventions are the result 
of imagination. The artist is the man possessed of a creative 
imagination; but “only the man in whom morality and re- 
ligion are living principles can ever see deeply enough into the 
heart of things to become a true artist.”” Such was Ruskin’s 
view. 

“Since imagination, in its higher rational use,” says a 
thoughtful writer, “is a means of grasping truth not open 
to the senses, it is a most important coadjutor, if not a neces- 
sary instrument, of reason in its loftiest investigations. 
Neither mathematics nor morals can make known their highest 
truths to the man of no imagination. The dull plodder 
within the circle of material facts will discern no connec- 
tions between them, and will have no science. Although God 
is apprehended not by imagination but by reason, yet imagina- 
tion is a most important help to religion, and we may almost 
say that some men have not imagination enough to be reli- 
gious.” 

In no realm of human research is the imagination more use- 
ful—and, if rightly used, more trustworthy—than in the realm 
of religion, and most of all is it suggestive and helpful in 
conceiving of and interpreting God. The Creator has put his 
own divine ideas into things created, but it is only the man 
who is possessed of imagination and uses his imagination 


200 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


that thinks God’s thoughts after him. The creative imagina- 
tion precedes and reveals the possibility of a thing, and creative 
power follows and makes the thing imagined to become real. 
The interpretative imagination of man, then, becomes a part 
of his intellectual and spiritual equipment for discovering the 
divine ideas embodied in the created universe. ‘What a 
wonderful imagination God has!’ was the exclamation of 
Tennyson once in a thoughtful mood while contemplating the 
marvellous things to be seen in the created universe—in study- 
ing which these words have already been quoted. What the 
Creator first imagined and then made real, only a creature 
with imagination can interpret. Imagination is thus seen to be 
necessary in order to interpret the mind and handiwork of 
God in the created universe. The truly great theologian is 
he who, by imagination combined with faith, discovers God, 
interprets him and reveals him to others. It would be practi- 
cally impossible for man, were he not possessed of imagination, 
to form in his mind an intelligible and worthy conception of 
God. The exercise of the imagination, therefore, is a path- 
way to God as rational and luminous as is the intellect, or the 
emotions, or the will, or the conscience. 


Professor E. H. Johnson, in his volume titled “The Reli- | 


gious Use of the Imagination,” says :— 


“When the personality of God is clearly imagined, perfec- 
tion no longer figures to our imagination as a phase of in- 
finitude, and thus of incomprehensibility, but as exceedingly 
definite, that is, as delimitation by virtue of excluding imper- 
fections. Thus, if we form a conception of divine holiness, it 
is not to be pictured as analogous to boundless space, but as 
moral energy untouched by evil. If we would contemplate 
God’s infinite love, we imagine it as a desire for nothing else 
except our well-being. Infinite justice is a not inaccurate 
rendering of what is due to any one. Even infiniteness of 
knowledge is readily imaginable as knowledge which omits 
nothing, and wisdom as knowledge which makes no mistakes 
about what to do. . . . Whatever logical embarrassment may | 
be met in attempting to infer what the infinite excellencies of 


God will lead him to do, we have an unquestionably correct _ 








THROUGH MAN TO GOD 201 


notion of what these attributes severally are, and may prop- 
erly imagine God as all-perfect, that is, as a Person infinite 
only in all that good is.” 


8. Lhe New Psychology and the Christian Faith 


Of the various sciences that may be designated as non- 
physical none has received of late more attention and study 
than psychology. Indeed the recent developments in the study 
of man’s psychological nature have been so notable and far- 
reaching as to lead many to distinguish the new from the 
old by referring to it as the “New Psychology.”’ We naturally 
think in this connection of Professor William James, the emi- 
nent psychologist of Harvard University, and his well-known 
and ‘widely read volume titled “Varieties of Religious Experi- 
ence.” The psychology of religion has found sane and helpful 
treatment at the hands of men like E. D. Starbuck, George 
Albert Coe and other authors that might be named and in 
so far as the new interpretation of man’s spiritual nature that 
has resulted from this study has been made by Christian the- 
ists, it has helped towards a truer and more rational inter- 
pretation of the Divine Being. But unfortunately this new 
science has found development at the hands of others who 
are not Christians, or even theists, and in their hands it is of 
course far from being a pathway that leads to God. We, 
perhaps, cannot do better than to let one who has made careful 
study of this new science in regard to its bearing on Christian 
faith, give us his impressions. Rev. Cyril E. Hudson in his 
volume titled “Recent Psychology and the Christian Religion” 
says: 


“There appears to be no necessary and irreconcilable con- 
flict between Christianity and current psychology; while in 
more ways than one those concerned with the development of 
the spiritual life may learn something from these inquiries 
into the human psyche and its amazingly subtle and complex 
modes of behaviour. But we must at the same time go further 
and point out that, though both psychology and religion are 
concerned with man’s spiritual nature, neither their methods 
of approach nor the aims they have in view are, or indeed 


202 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


ought to be, the same. Christianity is a supernatural way 
of life, or it is nothing. What God offers to the human race 
in and through Jesus Christ is not primarily a moral code 
nor a series of philosophical propositions, nor a system of 
philanthropy, but the opportunity of living at another and 
higher level than the ‘natural.’ ‘Lay hold on eternal life’ is 
one of those texts of Scripture in which the essence of Chris- 
tianity may be said to bé embodied. ... It is a doctrine 
fundamental to any orthodox form of Christianity that this 
divine life, this “super-nature’ which from all eternity Christ 
shares with the Father, and which is the essential principle 
of the Godhead itself, may be shared by mortal men and 
women here and now. With such conceptions as these psy- 
chology, as such, has not, and cannot have, any direct concern 
whatever. | 

“Psychoanalysis is a young child of science, and, like all 
children, is apt to be somewhat impatient with its elders. 
But, after all, Christianity is its elder, and has been grappling 
with the problems of the human soul for some twenty centuries 
—and not, we may say, without some measure of success. . . . 
Psychoanalysis has already accomplished much in the sphere 
of mental pathology. Who shall set limits to what it may 
some day achieve, not in abnormal cases only, but in the lives 
of ordinary men and women, hand in hand with Christian 
rath an 

“In the foregoing chapters on current psychological inquiries 
and the lessons to be drawn from them in regard to matters 
of religion, I have, for the most part, laid stress on the support 
they lend to Christian principles and practices. But it would 
be idle to pretend that this apparent rapprochment is the whole 
picture. So far from this being the case, it would be, on the 
whole, a more accurate account of the situation to say that 
where the protagonists of the New Psychology seem to support 
religion, they do so unwittingly and indirectly, and that when 
they discuss the subject directly we find them, almost to a 
man, emphatically and uncompromisingly antichristian.” 


In proof of this the author shows how Freud, the pioneer 
and apostle of this new science of psychoanalysis, and those 
who follow him, maintain a doctrine of “psychological deter-_ 
minism” which results in a purely mechanistic philosophy of 


THROUGH MAN TO GOD 203 


life involving the elimination of all belief alike in human 
freedom and in the existence of any supernatural Power capa- 
ble of aiding and reinforcing human thought and conduct. 
Whatever philosophy of life destroys in men and women 
the sense of moral responsibility for their conduct and char- 
acter and of accountability to a Divine Being for the deeds 
done in the body constitutes a pathway not to but away from 
God.* | 

It is to be devoutly hoped that the further and fuller de- 
velopment of the “New Psychology” will fall to the lot of 
those who, themselves believing in God and in the divine 
Christ, will make it a help and not a hindrance to both Chris- 
tian believing and Christian living. 


| 9. Human Psychology and the Divine Triunity 


Of the doctrines of revealed religion that which most of 
all transcends human reason is the doctrine of the Trinity— 
the doctrine that there is but one God, and yet in the unity of 
the divine nature there are three persons. It is difficult to 
find anything either in physical nature or in human nature 
to serve as an analogy for this truth. Many think that the 
nearest approach to a satisfactory illustration of the Trinity 
that has ever been suggested is found in psychology—in the 
fact that there is in man but one spiritual essence, but this 
one spirit exists as intellect, feeling, and will. These three 
are thoroughly distinct and are yet so vitally related as to 
constitute in the human consciousness but one spiritual being. 
Man is one in one sense and three in another sense. The whole 
man is in each—the whole man thinks, the whole man feels, 
and the whole man wills—and yet each represents the whole 
and, in some true sense, is the whole spiritual man. The mind 
is the man, the heart is the man, the will is the man—we have 
here three in one and one in three—three in one sense and 
One in another sense. It is consciousness that blends all three 
into one with a unity which, though allowing each to be dis- 
tinguished from the other, makes it impossible to separate the 
one from the other. 


08 1See “Recent Psychology and the Christian Religion,” pp. 66-69 and 
-100. 


204 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


If there is something here of real value to illustrate the doc- 
trine of the Trinity, it must be conceded that the analogy is 
by no means complete, and therefore, the illustration (as is 
true of all illustrations ever suggested for this purpose) must 
be recognised as inadequate and imperfect. In the meantime 
we can believe that a thing is, without being able fully to com- 
prehend how it is. Just as we know that we not merely have 
but ave mind and heart and will, and yet are conscious of our 
essential and absolute oneness; so we can believe that the in- 
finite God is and can be but one in essence, and yet that the 
Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God. Psychol- 
ogy, therefore, revealing man to himself not only as a spirit- 
ual unity but as a thinking mind, a feeling heart, and a self- 
determining will, renders a real service to theology in making 
more intelligible and comprehensible, at least for some minds, 
this most difficult doctrine in the Christian religion. 


Lt 
MAN’S SOCIAL RELATIONS AND GOD 


In psychology we study man as an individual; and in the 
preceding pages we have confined our study to his subjective 
and spiritual nature, finding therein much to aid us in our 
conception and interpretation of God. But man’s larger life is 
lived outside of himself in fellowship with others. His rela- 
tionships to others occupy much more of his consideration than 
do his thoughts about what he is within himself. His first 
thought is of mother and father; and in social fellowship 
with them and others in the home life begins; and later 
in due time it passes out into larger social relationships. 
From the various relationships of life we select for considera- 
tion two as having much in them that lead to the thought of 
God. 


1. Through Parenthood to God 


“Through Parenthood to God,’ suggests that one of the 
most helpful ways of approaching God is from and through 
a consideration of that most real and precious of all human 


THROUGH MAN TO GOD 205 


relationships—that of parenthood, of mother and child, of 
father and son. No conception and revelation of God is quite 
so dear to us as that which comes through the contemplation 
of the Divine Being as the infinite and perfect and eternal 
realisation to us of that which fatherhood and motherhood 
mean to us here. Our familiarity with the origin of life in 
parenthood does not in any way explain its deep mystery; 
but rather forces upon us the conviction that a mystery so 
profound can only find its ultimate explanation in One who 
is in a sense the Parent of all life, and in an altogether appro- 
priate sense of all beings possessed of spiritual life and bearing 
the divine image. 

The first conception that most human beings have of God 
is dérived from their parents; and parental instruction im- 
parted to children nearly always represents more or less faith- 
fully the prevailing religious ideas of the country in which 
a child is born. In most cases a certain amount of religious 
instruction by other teachers intensifies and enlarges the 
knowledge of God that has been received from parents. Every 
thoughtful person upon arriving at an age of intellectual 
maturity finds himself in possession of a certain idea of God; 
he scarcely knows how or why he has come to hold this view. 
But he ere long begins to think for himself and to have 
thoughts of his own concerning God. He begins to ask him- 
self questions about God before he asks others; he begins to 
reason about his own existence and nature. What is he? 
Where did he come from? What is he here for? His father 
and mother—what does parenthood and childhood mean? 
What is life? From thoughts like these about his own exist- 
ence and nature, he begins to think and reason about the 
existence and nature of a Divine Being and his relation to 
him. 

Among all the approaches to the conception of God which 
a study of the nature of man and his human relationship sug- 
gests, that of parenthood is the most suggestive, because it is 
the easiest and most natural. From the parent comes the life 
of the child. Why should it not be, to reason from analogy, 
that all things finite and natural come from a divine Parent, 


206 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


from a Being infinite and supernatural? ‘The parent is in a 
sense the originator of the life of the child, and is the one 
who, in the loving exercise of authority, rules over and com- 
mands the child, and to whom the child renders obedience. It 
would seem easy to pass from this to divine parenthood. No 
revelation of God that has ever been made has appealed to 
mankind so universally and has met with such ready accept- 
ance everywhere as Christ’s revelation of God as the Father 
of men. The wonder is that under the patriarchal system of 
the Old Testament it did not find its way into Hebrew thought 
and theology far back in Hebrew history. 

We have already called attention to primitive and heathen 
attempts to interpret God in terms of sex. So there have 
been occasional efforts on the part of theistic writers to inter-— 
pret the Triunity of the Godhead in terms of a divine Father- 
hood in God, Motherhood in the Holy Spirit, and Sonship in 
Christ, but it has not been accomplished in a measure and 
with a force and plausibility sufficient to commend itself to 
the Christian mind. In God the Father, as he has been re- 
vealed by Christ, are found all the mother virtues; and we are 
safe in assuming that Christ would have revealed the Mother- 
hood in the Godhead if it had been a reality. But the idea of 
the Parenthood of God does not require, for its perfect realisa- 
tion, that the analogy between human life and divine life shall. 
be complete, and that the human relationship of the father, 
mother and child shall be reproduced in the realm of Spirit 
“where they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are 
as the angels of God in heaven.” 


2. Through Government to God 


Man cannot live alone; he is a social being. Men by a 
very instinct of nature come together in groups; they are asso- 
ciated not merely in families, but families are associated to- 
gether in tribes. Kindred tribes again find a larger unity in 
races; and people of different tribes and races, intermingling 
in one and the same country, may constitute a nation. When 
men come together in any one of these group-formations, 
some kind of organisation and government becomes a neces- 


y 


THROUGH MAN TO GOD 207 


sity ; a family must have its patriarchal head; a tribe must have 
its chief; a race must have its ruler; a nation must have its 
official head. Organised government, to be effective, must in- 
vest its ruler or governor with authority. An ideal ruler 
would be one who possesses physical, intellectual, moral and 
social powers above his fellows. In proportion as one or all 
of these qualities of leadership meet in him will he have 
pre-eminence and power as a governor. From the beginning 
of human history men have thus been accustomed to look up 
to and obey some one as their governor or ruler. When, 
therefore, men think of a Divine Being above and over them, 
to whom they are subject, nothing could be more natural 
than for them to interpret the Divine Sovereign by and 
through their earthly rulers. It is in this manner that we dis- 
cover in the conception of human government a pathway to 
the Divine Governor and Government. 

Both the physical and the moral universe alike demand a 
Governor. It is not according to reason, to say that the phys- 
ical world is governed by the laws of nature as if law were in 
itself an entity and a power. Law in all other realms means 
nothing except as it is the expression of the free will of a 
rational personality. Law is the uniform mode according to 
which an intelligent free will acts. Instead of saying, there- 
fore, that this world is governed by the laws of nature, we 
should rather say that the world is governed by God accord- 
ing to the laws of nature—and this is none the less appropri- 
ate language if God be conceived of as immanent, governing 
nature ab intra rather than ab extra. And still more does the 
moral universe, composed of all the myriads of free and 
rational beings in existence, call for a Governor. Seeing that 
all aggregations of men must have a ruler, a king, a governor, 
can the intellectual universe, composed of rational beings, 
come into existence, and continue in existence, without a 
ruler? Can the moral universe, composed of moral free 
agents whose very existence is a ceaseless struggle between 
right and wrong, be conceived of as utterly without a Divine 
Governor? Our earthly citizenship reveals to us the citizen- 
ship of all men in the Kingdom of God. 


208 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Strictly speaking government is a term that applies only 
to beings who are rational and moral free agents. God’s 
relation to the ongoing of physical nature is that of conserva- 
tion rather than government; just as his relation to all living 
things is that of providential care rather than government. 
It is only by an enlarged and accommodated use of “‘govern- 
ment’ that we can apply the term to any creatures below the 
grade of rational beings. 

“A world of things needs no government; or, rather, gov- 
ernment has no meaning when applied to them. We can speak 
of government only where there are beings who by a certain | 
independence threaten to withdraw themselves from the gen- — 
eral plan which the ruler aims to realise. We find the proper 
subjects of a divine government only in finite spirits, as only 
these have that relative indépendence over against God which 
the idea of government demands. The notion of a divine 
government, then, implies free spirits as its subjects. But 
freedom in itself is a means only and not an end. Apart from 
some good which can be realised only by freedom, a free 
world is no better than a necessary one. Hence the notion of 
a world-government acquires rational meaning only as some 
supreme good exists which is to be the outcome of creation 

. what then, is that great end which all free beings should 
serve? We can find a sufficient world-goal only in the moral 
realm. A community of moral persons, obeying moral law © 
and enjoying moral blessedness, is the only end that could © 
excuse creation or make it worth while.” * Hence the very 
notion and necessity of moral government among men leads at 
once to the ethical realm, to the conclusion that there must be a 
moral government of the universe. 

Some years ago Dr. George A. Gordon preached a notable 
sermon in his church in Boston, the leading thought of which 
was developed under two heads: (1) This world of rational 
and moral free-agents, God’s best opportunity, and (2) This 
world just as it is man’s best opportunity. Here in our world 
God, the Creator and Governor of free moral beings, and man, 
the rational free agent, both have their best opportunity for 


1 Bowne, ‘“Theism,” Pp. 230-231. 


THROUGH MAN TO GOD 209 


achieving the truly divine and the truly human. A thought 
somewhat similar is found in one of his published volumes :— 
“Christianity is the interpretation of the Eternal, not 
through nature but through human nature; not through the 
lower expressions of the creative power but through man, the 
highest expression. ‘The creation at its best gives us the Cre- 
ator at his best; the highest man is the supreme revelation of 
God. The incarnation of God in Jesus, the perfect man, in 
all men as moral beings, in all good men as the life of their life, 
is the fundamental idea in my philosophy of existence. The 
greatest thing that we know is man, the greatest man that we 
know is Jesus Christ; and our worthiest thought of God re- 
.gards him as the God and Father of Jesus Christ. The human- 
ity of God is given in the humanity of man; it is given su- 
premely in the humanity of Jesus.”” We ascend to God through 
man, and especially through Jesus the perfect man; and through 
man, pre-eminently through Jesus the perfect man, God de- . 
scends to us. “A system,” Dr. Fairbairn has said, “whose 
crown and centre is the Divine Man is one which does justice 
to everything positive in humanity by penetrating it everywhere 
with Deity. The incarnation as thus interpreted is the truth 
which turns nature and man, history and religion, into the 
luminous dwelling place of God.” 


O Son of God incarnate, 
O Son of Man divine, 

In whom God’s glory dwelleth, 
In whom man’s virtues shine, 
God’s light to earth thou bringest 

To drive sin’s night away, 
And, through thy life so radiant, 
Earth’s darkness turns to day. 


O Mind of God incarnate, 
O Thought in flesh enshrined, 
In human form thou speakest 
To men the Father’s mind: 
God’s thought to earth thou bringest 
That men in thee may see 
What God is like, and, seeing, 
Think God’s thoughts after thee. 


210 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


O Heart of God incarnate, 
Love-bearer to mankind, 
From thee we learn what love is, 
In thee love’s ways we find: 
God’s love to earth thou bringest 
In living deeds that prove 
How sweet to serve all others, 
When we all others love. 


O Will of God incarnate, 
So human, so divine, 
Free wills to us thou givest 
That we may make them thine: 
God’s will to earth thou bringest 
That all who would obey 
May learn from thee their duty, 
The truth, the life, the way. 
WoEST: 


CHAPTER EIGHT 


THROUGH PHILOSOPHY TO GOD 





CuarpTerR Eicur 
THROUGH PHILOSOPHY TO GOD 


“In philosophy,’ Lord Bacon has said, in language that 
seems now somewhat quaint, “the contemplations of man do 
either penetrate unto God, or are circumferred to nature, or 
are reflected or reverted upon himself; out of which several 
inquiries there do arise three knowledges, Divine philosophy, 
natural philosophy and human philosophy. The object-matter 
of philosophy, therefore, may be distinguished as God, nature 
and man.” The second of these subjects we have considered 
in the chapter titled “Through Nature to God”; and the third, 
“human philosophy,’ we have been studying in the chapter 
titled “Through Man to God’—through human nature and 
psychology to God. The manner in which nature and man have 
here been studied, as pathways to God, would doubtless classify 
these studies, under Lord Bacon’s definition, as belonging to 
“Divine philosophy.” But we come now more directly to con- 
sider “Divine philosophy,”’ human thought as related to God 
—its subject and its object, its origin and its end. It is im- 
possible for a philosopher to be true to his high calling—to 
think things through to their cause, to trace them back to 
their ultimate sources, to discover why things are just what 
they are, and what is their final end—without thinking of God, 
who he is, or what he is, and how he acts and relates himself 
to finite things. The history of philosophy reveals the fact 
that the most illustrious and influential philosophers of the 
past have been theists who believed profoundly in the existence 
of a personal God. 


I 
OURS A RATIONAL UNIVERSE 


“Let us begin, then,” said Plato, “by asking whether all 


this which men call the universe is left to the guidance of an 
) 213 


214 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


irrational and random chance, or, on the contrary, as our 
fathers declared, is ordered and governed by a marvellous in- 
telligence and wisdom.” And a modern follower of Plato has 
said that the human intellect could not live unless it were em- 
bosomed by a universe which is in its constitution and con- 
tents as rational as itself, seeing that reason could not live 
in a world where no reason is. 


1. What Is Pmlosophy? 


Philosophy means etymologically the love of wisdom. The 
love of knowledge, the desire to know, is the inspiration of 
man in his pursuit of that knowledge which is the aim and 
end of philosophy. Surrounded as man is by the ever-chang- 
ing phenomena of nature, he desires and seeks to know what 
things are, what causes them to change, what is behind and 
what is before these changes. Preceding and underlying all 
philosophical inquiries, therefore, concerning nature, man and 
God, there comes what has been called “the first philosophy, 
that which seeks to ascertain the grounds or principles of 
knowledge, and the causes of all things.’’ Hence philosophy, 
in this primary sense, has been defined as “‘the science of 
causes and principles”; and its peculiar province is to investi- 
gate the principles on which all knowledge and all being ulti- 
mately rest. Whatever challenges human thought and inquiry, 
becomes a problem for philosophy to investigate, to seek to 
understand, to solve, and to explain. The mind of man seeks 
certitude, and, although it often cannot go beyond speculation’ 
and plausible hypothesis, it can rest satisfied only when facts 
have been gathered, and properly related to each other, and 
so interpreted as to necessitate conclusions so trustworthy that 
they are accredited as knowledge. Philosophy is founded on 
the trustworthiness of knowledge, and therefore on the relia- 
bility of the rational processes by which it is attained. “Phi- 
losophy,” Ferrier, the Scotch philosopher, says, “is the at- 
tainment of truth by the way of reason”; and with equal 
propriety and similar phraseology, we may define theistic phi- 
losophy as the attainment of truth concerning God by the way 
of reason. 


THROUGH PHILOSOPHY TO GOD 215 


There is nothing more important in the study of the philoso- 
phy of religion than that of rightly relating religion to reason, 
and authority to truth. Timid souls often manifest needless 
concern about making reason religious, and about giving au- 
thority to truth. But what we need to be most concerned 
about is making religion rational—is seeing that religion 
has reason in it and back of it in all that it teaches and enjoins. 
What we need to be most concerned about is not to protect 
truth by authority but rather that authority shall be supported 
by reason and clothed with truth. Reason and truth are the 
things that give religion its authority over the minds and con- 
sciences of intelligent, thinking men. When a religion, or a 
Church, or a creed is more concerned about clothing itself 
with authority and having its authority recognised and obeyed 
than it is with providing itself with reason and clothing itself 
with truth and having its truth recognised, it is on the road to 
decay and death. The philosophical study of religion means 
the use of reason to reach truth, and seeks to lay the founda- 
tions of religious faith in reason, and in truth. To do this 
it must rightly interpret God who is the source of all reason 
and all truth. The nature and will of God, or the will of God 
as the perfect expression of his nature, is that which makes 
truth to be what it is as opposed to error. God endowed man 
with reason, one of his own attributes, that men might by 
the use of reason reach truth—and to find ultimate truth means 
to find God. 

The only condition on which reason could have nothing to 
do with religion, says Dr. Fairbairn, is that religion should 
have nothing to do with truth. For in every controversy 
concerning what.is or what is not truth, reason and not author- 
ity is the supreme arbiter. The authority that decides against 
reason commits itself to a conflict which is certain to issue in 
its defeat. The man who distrusts reason distrusts the God 
who gave it, and distrusts also the most efficient of all the 
servants he has bidden work within and upon man in behalf of 
the truth.* 


1“Philosophy of the Christian Religion,’ pp. 18, 19. In-thus referring 
to and quoting from this work so frequently I am showing in the best manner 


216 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


2. Relation of Philosophy to Science 


Looked at in the light of what it aims to reach by the way 
of reason, philosophy is described by Calderwood as a rational 
explanation of things existing and of things occurring, and is 
distinguished from science in these words: ‘‘Science is the 
rational explanation of external phenomena, by discovery of 
invariable sequence in their occurrence, and postulating ac- 
cordingly a law of nature, its object being to show how the 
phenomena exist. Philosophy is the ultimate rational explana- 
tion of things, obtained by discovery of the reason of their 
existence, or by showing why they exist.’ “Man first ex- 
amines phenomena,” says Professor William Fleming, “but 
he is not satisfied until he has reduced them to their causes, 
' and, when he has done so, he asks to determine the value of 
the knowledge to which he has attained. This is philosophy 
properly so called—the mother and governing science—the 
science of sciences.” 

While it is the province of science simply to discover the 
laws of nature in its various realms, and to study and report on 
what is learned as to how these laws work, it is quite impossible 
for the thoughtful scientific worker not to indulge in specula- 
tions as to the originating and final causes of things—in 
thoughts which belong to the sphere of philosophy. It is in 
the interests of truth, and a thing to be desired, that scientists 
and philosophers—and theologians also—should keep in close 
touch with each other and go forth hand in hand for the 
discovery of truth. The scientist’s influence tends to keep the 
philosopher’s feet down on the solid foundations of facts but 
for which his thought may soar far afield and become mere 
speculative visions rather than, what they ought to be, true 
interpretations of present realities as well as of eternal spiritual 
verities. 


possible my appreciation of and indebtedness to a volume which, though 
published several years ago, should long continue to be read and studied, 
especially by young ministers. 


THROUGH PHILOSOPHY TO GOD 217 


3. Mind a Function of Spirit, Not of Matter 


Materialism teaches that mind has no existence except as 
a function of the body—that it is a resultant and product of 
the physical organisation, particularly that part of it found 
in the brain. In direct and total opposition to this conception 
is that of philosophic idealism which says that matter has no 
existence except in and through and for the mind, and has no 
attributes except what mind gives to it. Neither of these views 
is true according to theistic philosophic realism which teaches 
that there are two entities in our world, matter and spirit, the 
one as real as the other, each possessed of attributes distinct 
and different from the other. According to the last-named 
view; which may be called the prevalent view among theists 
generally, man is a physico-spiritual being uniting the two 
entities in himself; but mind and thought and consciousness 
are functions of his spirit and not of his physical body. The 
physical, fleshly body encases and incarnates the spirit which, 
because of its dominance over the body, and even more be- 
cause of the attributes which it possesses by virtue of its 
relationship to the infinite Spirit, is regarded as the real man. 
Man has a body, but he is a spirit. The body is his servant, 
an instrument to do his bidding, but nevertheless so vitally 
related to him as to condition and limit the activity of his 
spirit. 

Materialism pure and simple is utterly incompatible with 
any theistic explanation of the origin of life and of mind and of 
their continued existence after death. It holds that “the brain 
secretes thought as the liver secretes bile,’ or, to present the 
doctrine in more refined form “that consciousness, thought, 
feeling, volition, are phenomena of the nervous organism, as 
magnetism is the property of lodestone.” Thought is com- 
pared to ‘a flame which first burns faintly, then more brightly, 
then flickers, and at length goes out, as the material source of 
‘combustion is consumed or dissipated.” ‘Thought is the 
result of chemical or mechanical changes in the brain, an idea 
being nothing but an explosion or discharge of a brain-cell, 
and an emotion being the bursting into flame of several brain 


218 THE .PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


cells.’ Matter is endowed with a mental potency called “mind- 
stuff, which in the process of evolution forms itself into brain- 
cells which become not only the physical basis but the produc- 
ing cause of thought, feeling and volition.” The physical 
energy that functions in the form of mind-force, being inde- 
structible, as all energy is, on being dissolved in one combina- 
tion by death, awaits the call of nature in evolution to enter 
into some new combination and form some new brain-cells. 
God, on this theory, is nothing more nor less than the “Mind- 
stuff” of Universal Nature spelt with capital letters, and 
interpreted in terms of deity.’ 


4. Evidences of Mind in the Physical Universe 


If, as Lord Kelvin has said, an atom bears the marks of 
being a “manufactured article,” and therefore something con- 
structed by mind, much more truly may we say of the aggre- 
gation of related atoms in this world of ours, that the entire 
mass of matter is a “manufactured article,’ in the structure 
and composition of which we can discern both matter and 
mind. In the building of a house we distinguish different 
causes thus :—the material cause is the wood, brick, or stone 
used in its construction; the formal cause is the plan in the 
mind of the architect; the efficient cause is the carpenters, 
bricklayers, or other workmen who put the material in shape 
in accordance with the plan of the architect; the final cause 
is the purpose for which the building is erected, a home, bank, 
store, factory. But that which is last in realisation is first 
in mind. The final cause is that which determines and pro- 
vides all the other causes, and is therefore the real cause with- 
out which the thing caused would not be. Incidentally we may 
observe that the scientist has to do principally with the first 
and third of these causes, while the second and fourth belong 
chiefly to the sphere of philosophy. 

To say that atoms and the aggregation of atoms in the 
material universe bear the marks of being ‘‘manufactured” 
must not be interpreted as turning God into a “carpenter” 


1 See Fisher’s “Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief,” pp. 68 and 
ae 


THROUGH PHILOSOPHY TO GOD 219 


whose method of work in nature is ab extra and not ab intra. 
Out of elements in the soil and the air some force that we 
call life is “manufacturing” the plant. If the “manufacturer” 
is conceived of and interpreted as impersonal force, the re- 
sultant philosophy is materialistic. If, on the other hand, the 
manufacturer be none other than the immanent personal God 
working from within, the resultant philosophy is theistic. 

“While the mind of man looketh upon second causes scat- 
tered,”—we quote Lord Bacon again—“‘it may sometimes rest 
in them and go no farther; but when it beholdeth the chain 
of them confederate and linked together, it must needs fly 
to Providence and Deity.” 

If it takes mind to create and construct, then it follows that 
whatever is constructed by mind is rational—is something in- 
telligible, interpretable by mind. We have then, in order: 
first, the creative mind; second, the intelligible creation, and 
third, the interpreting mind—that is, first, God; second, na- 
ture; third, man. Nature evolves the thoughts which God 
involves in it and stamps upon it. Hence to study nature and 
discern the marks of mind in it is, as Kepler expressed it, 
“to think God’s thoughts after him.” And, when man brings 
together and relates these individual thoughts of God to each 
other as they are expressed in nature, his combination and 
arrangement of these thoughts of God constitute a classifica- 
tion of the laws of nature. This is why Agassiz, the eminent 
theistic scientist of Harvard University, once said that 
“thorough classification is an interpretation of the thoughts 
of God.” If “knowing” be something more than “thinking” 
it, too, may be defined in somewhat similar terms, as Ueberweg, 
author of the well known “History of Philosophy,” has done: 
“The act of knowing, in so far as it is the copying in the 
human consciousness of the essence of the thing, is an after- 
thinking of the thoughts which the Divine creative thinking 
has built into things; in action (divine and human) the pre- 
ceding thought determines what actually exists, but in knowing, 
the actual existence, in itself conformable to reason, determines 
the human thought.” * 


1 “System of Logic,” p. 2. 


220 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


But a rational interpretation of the universe means also an 
ethical and spiritual interpretation of it, if Thomas Carlyle 
was right when he said that “there is a divine idea pervading 
the visible universe, which is, indeed, but its symbol and 
sensible manifestation, having in itself no meaning, or even 
true existence, independent of it. Although to the mass of 
men this divine idea lies hidden, yet to discern it, and seize 
it, and live wholly in it, is the condition of all genuine virtue, 
knowledge, freedom, and the end, therefore, of all spiritual 
effort in every age.” 


5. Can Chance Explain Our World? 


Our world must have come to be what it is either by chance 
or through the direction of some designing mind. To say that 
a thing happens by chance does not mean that it comes to 
pass uncaused—for nothing happens in the universe without 
a cause—but it means that it happened without being planned 
or designed. “Chance is opposed not to the caused, but to 
the purposed.” “We cannot speak of accidental occurrences, 
but we may speak of accidental concurrences,” says Dr. James 
McCosh.* “Facts casually conjoined,’ says John Stuart Mill, 
“are separately the effects of causes, and therefore of laws, 
but of different causes, and causes not connected by any law. 
It is incorrect, then, to say that any phenomenon is produced 
by chance; but we may say that two or more phenomena are 
conjoined by chance, meaning that they are in no way related 
through causation, that they are neither cause and effect, nor 
effects of the same cause, nor effects of causes between which 
there subsists any law of coexistence, nor even effects of the 
same original law of collocation.” ” 

The issue, then, between theistic philosophy and atheistic 


1 “Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation,” p. 44 

2“Many things happen besides what man intends or purposes; and also 
some things happen different from what is aimed at by nature. We cannot 
call them natural things, or from nature, neither can we say that they are 
from human intention. They are what we call fortuitous events, and the - 
cause which produces them is called chance. But they all have respect to 
some end intended by nature or by man. So that nothing can be more true 
than what Aristotle says, that if there were no end intended, there could be 
no such thing as chance.” (Fleming’s “Vocabulary of Philosophy.”) 


a 


THROUGH PHILOSOPHY TO GOD 221 


materialism is not as to whether anything or all things have 
occurred and are occurring in this world uncaused and by 
chance, but whether all the concurrences that come together 
in the realm of matter and life in this world have come by 
chance, that is, without purpose and design, or, on the other 
hand, as a result of purpose and design on the part of an In- 
telligent Cause, a designing Mind. Archbishop Tillotson’s 
statement of the case for theism is none the less forceful 
because it is more than two hundred years old: “How often 
might a man, after he had jumbled a set of letters in a bag, 
fling them out upon the ground before they would fall into an 
fexact poem, yea, or so much as make a good discourse in 
prose? And may not a little book be as easily made by 
chance as this great volume of the world? How long might 
a man be Rents colours upon canvas with a cavetese hand 
before they would happen to make the exact picture of a man? 
And is a man easier made by chance than his picture? How 
long might twenty thousand blind men, which should be sent 
out from the several remote parts of England, wander up and 
down before they would all meet upon Salisbury Plain, and 
fall into rank and file in the exact order of an army? And 
yet this is much more easy to be imagined than that the in- 
numerable blind parts of matter should rendezvous themselves 
into a world.” 

_ The author of “The Religion of Science’ has presented the 
same argument and reached the same conclusion by the use 
of a homely illustration: “A bird could make no scratches on 
the ground with its feet that man could read; the bird puts 
no mind in the prints of its feet for the mind of man to 
interpret. Man can decipher the strange letters on an Egyptian 
obelisk because the letters embody mind, and mind common to 
him and those who made the hieroglyphics. Man can read 
and interpret nature, but he can do so only because it contains 
‘mind, and mind like unto his own mind. Therefore the mind 
embodied in nature and the mind active in man can come 
together, because they both are expressions of one infinite 


Mind.” 
i + 
h 





















i, 
t 


222 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


II 


IDEALISM AND REALISM IN PHILOSOPHY AND 
THEOLOGY 


Philosophers are divided into realists and idealists in their 
interpretations of matter and all things external to the mind. 
The trend of philosophic and theistic thought in its conception 
of matter and its attributes and laws, in recent times has been 
not only away from realism, but pronouncedly idealistic; but 
present day thinkers, it seems to me, are more and more ex- 
pressing their views in terms of realism. 


1. Philosophic and Thetstic Idealism 


The most notable feature of idealistic philosophy is found 
not in what it affirms but in what it denies. This appears not 
only in what those who are not idealists say in criticism of it, 
but in what the exponents of this philosophical system them- 
selves say of it—as, for example, will appear in the following 
quotation from its leading champion among English philoso- 
phers, which begins by “denying the denials” of idealism :— 

“In denying to the things perceived by sense an existence 
independent of a substance or support wherein they may exist,” 
says Bishop Berkeley, the most eminent exponent of philo- 
sophic idealism, ‘we detract nothing from the received opin- 
ion of their reality, and are guilty of no innovation in that 
respect. All the difference is that according to us the unthink- 
ing beings perceived by sense have no existence distinct from 
being perceived, and therefore cannot exist in any other sub- 
stance than those unextended, indivisible, substances or spirits, 
which act, think, and. perceive them.” 

Idealism in philosophy and its implications are thus defined 
by those who have made a careful and comprehensive study 
of what it both affirms and denies: 

The idealist says, according to Ribot, the author of “Con- 
temporary English Psychology,” that “there is only one exist- 
ence, the mind. Analyse the conception of matter, and you 
will discover that it is only a mental synthesis of qualities. 


THROUGH PHILOSOPHY TO GOD 223 


bf 


Our knowledge is subjective.” ‘Idealism,’ says Calderwood, 
“blots out matter from existence, and affirms that mind is 
the only reality.”’ “Idealism denies the existence or the imme- 
diate knowledge of the external world, or matter, and maintains 
that nothing exists, or is known, except minds.” The es- 
sence of Berkeley’s position, according to a writer in the “En- 
cyclopedia Britannica,” is this: ‘“The universe is inconceivable 
apart from mind,—that existence as such, denotes conscious 
spirits and the objects of consciousness. Matter and external 
things, in so far as they are thought to have an existence 
beyond the circle of consciousness, are impossible, inconceiv- 
able, absurd.” 

But to be fair to theistic idealism we must let one or more 
of its best representatives speak for it. 

The late Dr. Borden P. Bowne is ranked as an idealist in 
philosophy and is considered one of the greatest and most 
influential of American writers and teachers who represent this 
school of philosophic thought. He has, however, not merely 
reproduced the lines of thought marked out by Berkeley. He 
claims to have reinterpreted this system of thought and to 
have given formal expression to a type of idealism which 
escapes the errors and weaknesses of traditional idealism and 
embodies all the essential truth there is in realism. In holding 
that the phenomenal world exists only in and through and for 
the mind he is an idealist, but he feels that to stop here justifies 
to a greater or less extent the objection and criticism of the 
common mind that “idealism reduces the external world to a 
discontinuous set of impressions in scattered minds.’ He 
claims that his interpretation and system of idealism makes it 
possible to maintain at once the subjectivity of the phenomenal 
world, that is its existence, not in itself, but only in and for 
mind; and also its universality, that is its existence for all 
minds. Such an idealism differs from realism he declares, only 
in the one point of denying an extra-mental existence to the 
phenomenal world. Persons have, he says, “‘ontological other- 
ness to the Infinite.” But our concern is not so much with the 
truth or the error of his form of idealism as it is to see how he 
makes his philosophy a pathway to God. That he does this as 


224 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


few modern philosophers have done is not open to question as 
the following paragraph will show: 


“Let us say, then, that the world is essentially a going forth 
of divine Causality under the forms of space and time, and 
in accordance with a rational plan. The outcome of this ac- 
tivity is the phenomenal world, which is neither outside nor 
inside of God in a spatial sense, but which exists in unpictur- 
able dependence upon the Divine Will; as our thoughts are 
neither outside nor inside of the mind in a spatial sense, but 
depend upon the mind as their cause and subject. This world, 
being independent of us, has all the continuity, uniformity, 
and objectivity which an extra-mental system could have; and, 
as distinct from individual delusion, is real and universal. In- 
deed, it is hard to say what this view should be called. In 
distinction from the idealism [nihilism] of sensationalism, it 
is realism. It is realistic, also, in affrming an objective cosmic 
system independent of finite thinking. It is idealistic, on the 
other hand, in maintaining that this system is essentially phe- 
nomenal and exists only in and for, as well as through, in- 
telligence. Over against the human reason whereby nature 
exists for us is a Supreme Reason, through and in which nature 
has, itsrealiexistence, 7) 


If a realist affirms that all things material are in themselves 
really and exactly what they seem to be, provided they seem 
to be what they really are, is his statement a meaningless tru- 
ism? Not so meaningless as many of the statements made 
by philosophical idealists. If it be true that the thing known 
is always the cause of the knowledge of it, and not the knowl- 
edge the cause of the thing known, idealism cannot be true. 
There are delusions and illusions not only in the spiritual but 
also in the mental and material world, like the mirage in the 
desert, and the hearing of sounds that exist only in the imagi- 
nation of the hearer; and these illusions in thought as to ma- 
terial things (as, for example, in a blind man’s idea of colour. 
or a deaf man’s idea of sound) serve to make it plain that 
there is a difference between a material thing as it really is, 
and as it may chance to be in some one’s mind and thought. 


1“Theory of Thought and Knowledge,” pp. 342-3. 


THROUGH PHILOSOPHY TO GOD 225 


Thought of a thing is knowledge only when the concept in 
the mind corresponds with the thing as it really is. If a man 
says he thinks a material object is such and such a thing, or 
says that he knows it to be such, his thinking it and knowing 
it are an illusion and a delusion, unless the thing really is what 
he thinks he knows it to be. If this be true, it cannot be that 
things material possess no properties and have no being except 
as the mind gives them such. The thing known, we repeat, 
is the cause of the knowledge, not the knowledge the cause 
of the thing known. Matter may be possessed of certain prop- 
erties, and no man may know anything of these properties ; 
or there may be a partial and incomplete knowledge of them; 
or there may be knowledge of them that is accurate and com- 
plete. The possession of the properties in question is not 
in any way affected by man’s ignorance of them or by his 
knowledge of them, be it partial or complete. The variable 
and uncertain factor in the problem of knowledge is not found 
in the thing known but in the knowledge or lack of knowledge 
possessed by the mind whose thought is directed towards it. 

The function of the mind is not to create the objects of 
its thought and knowledge, but to interpret—to interpret what 
other minds have done. It is not the existence of reality but 
the meaning and significance of the material universe as a 
whole and in all its parts and indeed of all other objects of 
knowledge—this is what depends upon mind. The mind of 
the Maker and the minds of the interpreters of Nature are 
akin to each other; and so far give meaning and significance 
to it that we cannot conceive of physical nature having been 
brought into existence by the Creator but for the presence in 
the universe of mind to use and enjoy it. But to go beyond 
this and say, as some theistic idealists do, that matter and its 
properties are in their ultimate reality nothing but mind, noth- 
ing but thought, is, it seems to me, beyond and against the 
philosophy of common sense and what reason can approve. 

“Tf the external world were resolved merely into actual sen- 
sations,”’ says a critic of the idealistic philosophy, “the exist- 
ence of the sensible things we see and touch would be 
intermittent and fragmentary, not permanent and complete. 


226 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


If external matter means only actual sensations, all visible 
qualities of things must relapse into nonentity whenever they 
are left in the dark; and thus tangible ones, too, unless a 
percipient is in contact with every part of them. The external 
world could not have existed millions of ages before men or 
other sentient beings began to be conscious of sensations, if 
this is what is meant by its real existence.” Or, will it be 
said that it had existence in and for the mind of God before 
finite minds came into existence? 

The natural tendency of such philosophy would seem to be 
away from God—at least so far as they are concerned who 
have not yet found God—tending to lead men to see in and 
through matter and its properties, not God, but themselves, 
their own mind and thought. On this theory mind in its 
knowledge of matter would be like unto a man looking into 
a mirror and seeing only himself there, thinking and saying, 
“The mirror is nothing; it is I—it is all me!” 


2. Philosophic and Theistic Realism 


The term realism in philosophy has two distinct meanings: 
(1) It is the doctrine that generic terms—e.g., matter, animal, 
man, etc.—represent realities and not mere concepts of the 
mind. Plato taught that the genus has a real and positive exist- 
ence antecedent to the individuals which compose it, while 
Aristotle’s idea, more in accord with the universal sentiment 
of mankind, was that the genus has real existence only in the 
individuals which compose it. (2) Realism, as opposed to 
the idealism of Bishop Berkeley and his followers, which 
teaches that the only real existence that can be predicated of 
anything is the existence which it has in and for conscious, 
knowing minds, means that the contents of the phenomenal 
world (material things, individual objects of various kinds) 
have a real existence in themselves, antecedent to and inde- 
pendent of the apprehension and knowledge of them possessed" 
by the mind. Only by keeping in mind these two different 
uses of the term realism is it possible to avoid confusion in 
the interpretation of any sentence where this word appears. 

The truth in theistic philosophy seems to us to be with real- 


THROUGH PHILOSOPHY TO GOD 227 


ism, rightly defined, and not with idealism. We can of course 
know nothing of the universe as a whole, or of anything in it, 
beyond what the knowing agent by his constitution is capable 
of discerning. The important question, says Dr. Fisher, is, 
whether things are known by us as they are, or whether they 
undergo a metamorphosis, converting them into things unlike 
themselves, by being brought into contact with the perceiving 
and thinking subject. It is tantamount to whether our men- 
tal constitution is, or is not, an instrument for perceiving 
truth. The philosophy of idealism is tantamount to a denial 
of knowledge in the sense in which this term is interpreted 
and understood by the universal common sense of mankind. 
The rescue of philosophy from its aberrations, Professor 
Fisher has truly said, must begin in a full and consistent 
recognition of the reality of knowledge. Intuitions are the 
counterpart of realities. The categories are objective; they 
are modes of existence as well as modes of knowledge. Dis- 
tinct as mind and nature are, there is such an affinity in the 
constitution of both and such an adaptation of each to each, 
that knowledge is not a bare product of subjective activity, 
but a reflex of reality.? 

Much clearer and more satisfactory than any statements 
made by the exponents of philosophic idealism are the follow- 
ing utterances of a former eminent professor of Philosophy, 
Dr. James McCosh, late President of Princeton University : 


“We know the object as existing or having being. This 
iS a necessary conviction, attached to, or rather composing 
an essential part of, our concrete cognition of every material 
object presented to us, be it of our own frame or of things 
external to our frame; whether this hard stone, or this yield- 
ing water, or even this vapoury mist of fleeting cloud. We 
look on each of the objects thus presented to us, in our organ- 
ism or beyond it, as having an existence, a being, a reality. 
Every one understands these phrases; they cannot be made 
simpler or more intelligible by an explanation. We understand 
them because they express a mental fact which every one 


1See Fisher’s “Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief,” pp. 82-88. 


228 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


has experienced. We may talk of what we contemplate 
in sense-perception being nothing but an impression, an ap- 
pearance, an idea, but we can never be made to give our spon- 
taneous assent to any such statements. However ingenious 
the arguments which may be adduced in favour of the objects 
of our sense-perceptions being mere illusions, we find after 
listening to them and allowing to them all the weight that 
is possible, that we still look upon bodies as realities the 
next time they present themselves. The reason is we know 
them to be realities by a native cognition which can never be 
overcome.” 


“There is no way of avoiding the black and blank scepticism 
created by philosophic idealism,’ says Dr. McCosh, “except 
by standing up for the trustworthiness of all our original 
intuitions and formally maintaining that there is a reality 
wherever our intuitions declare that there is.” 

Equally to the point as an expression of the necessity for 
faith in the objective reality of what we see and hear and 
handle as a condition of faith in the sincerity and honesty of 
the Creator are the following utterances of Descartes, the 
father of modern philosophy: 


“Because we perceive, or rather, stimulated by sense, clearly 
and distinctly apprehend, certain matter extended ‘in length,. 
breadth, and thickness, the various parts of which have differ- 
ent figures and motions, and give rise to the sensations we 
have of colours, smells, pains, etc., God ewould, without ques- 
tion, deserve to be regarded as a deceiver if he directly and of 
himself presented to our mind the idea of this extended matter, 
or merely caused it to be presented to us by some object which 
possessed neither extension, figure, nor motion. For we clearly 
conceive this matter as entirely distinct from God and from 
ourselves or our mind; and appear even clearly to discern 
that the idea of it is formed in us on occasion of objects exist- 
ing out of our minds, to which it is in every respect similar. 
But, since God cannot deceive us, for this is repugnant to his 
nature, as has been already remarked, we must unhesitatingly 
conclude that there exists a certain object, extended in length, 
breadth, and thickness, and possessing all those properties 


THROUGH PHILOSOPHY TO GOD 229 


which we clearly apprehend to belong to what is extended. 
And this extended substance is what we call body or matter.” 


3. Truth in Philosophy Necessary to Truth in Theology 


A true philosophy of the human mind and of the nature 
of the concepts and knowledge of things attainable by the 
mind is essential to a true theology concerning God. In every 
act of knowledge we recognise three things: A perceiver, a 
_ thing perceived and a perception. The first represents a person 
possessed of mind; the second, an object possessed of real 
existence and attributes capable of being perceived; and the 
third involves an exercise of the mind which relates the per- 
ceiving person and the perceived thing to each other in such 
manner that if the concept or idea produced in the mind by 
the act of perception corresponds with the object as it really 
is, the resultant is knowledge. If the idea does not correspond 
with the reality, the result is not knowledge, but an illusion, 
a mental delusion, which is partial or complete in proportion 
as the act of perception fails to reproduce or represent accu- — 
rately and fully the thing perceived as it really is. If the mind 
of the perceiver is not normal, or, if the eye or other medium 
of perception, or any condition involved in perception, be de- 
fective, there will be an idea in the mind, but it will not cor- 
respond with the reality and will not be entitled to be called 
anything more, at best, than imperfect knowledge—and this 
is true, whether the person perceiving is aware of the imper- 
fection of his knowledge or not. At the foundation of all 
knowledge, and all faith, whether pertaining to material or 
spiritual objects, whether it pertains to man or to God as an 
_ object of knowledge, is the conviction that things are what 
_ they seem to be if they seem to be what they really are. 

) The fact that there are mental illusions and delusions, and 
_ that men may and do often credit these as knowledge, and for 
a long time, it may be, act upon the assumption that the 
_ thing as it is supposed to be is the thing as it really is—this 
cannot justify the philosophy that makes the mind the maker 
of the real or the phenomenal world. If the thing known is 

the cause of the knowledge, and not the knowledge the cause 


230 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


of the thing known, it is not easy to see how philosophic 
idealism can be true. Not, therefore, until our idea of God, 
our interpretation of God, becomes a knowledge of him as 
he really is, can we be said to have found the one and only 
living and true God. The conceptions of God held by pil- 
grims on the multitudinous pathways in life’s journey that 
lead towards him may be marked by manifold illusions and 
delusions, by misinterpretations and misconceptions—some 
much nearer to the truth than others,—and all these pathways 
and pilgrims may be headed, as indeed they are, towards the 
same goal, and may, happily, ultimately find the God they 
seek; but if they do, when they do, it will be found that he 
is the one God, a real God, the only living and true God, 
whom to know aright is life eternal. A true theology con- 
cerning God can be built alone on a true philosophy concerning 
man’s knowledge of him. 

While philosophers may be designated more or less con- 
sistently as idealists, realists, pragmatists, and the like, many 
theistic and Christian believers who think philosophically of the 
problems of religion do not feel inclined to commit themselves 
to any one of the systems of philosophy designated by these 
terms. They see in each system that to which they give assent 
and that to which they object, and are inclined to approve of 
the statement made by Dr. A. B. D. Alexander, himself a 
philosopher: “As to the terms, idealism and realism, I should 
be heartily glad if we might get rid of them altogether; no 
sane philosophy has ever been exclusively the one or the other.” 
The object of our studies here, however, has not been primarily 
to argue for any one system of philosophy as opposed to 
another, but rather to show wherein and how each system, 
whatever may be the elements of truth or error in it, leads the 
thinker to an infinite Thinker, to a Being of infinite intelligence 
as the most satisfactory explanation, if indeed it be not the only 
possible rational explanation, of the problem of existence. 


CHAPTER NINE 


THROUGH REASON TO GOD 


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Cuapter NINE 
THROUGH REASON TO GOD 


Theistic Philosophy differs from philosophic Theism only 
in the point of emphasis. The former consists in begin- 
ning, continuing and ending the process of thinking and 
reasoning on the assumption that the source and end of all 
thought and reason are found in a personal God. It is think- 
ing things through with God rather than about God. Philo- 
sophic theism, on the other hand, is here employed to convey 
the idea that all the elements of intellectual philosophy 
(thought, speculation, reason, logic, argument, etc.) are used 
to prove not only the fact of the existence of a Divine Being, 
but also that this Divine Being is a personal Spirit possessed 
of infinite power, knowledge, goodness, holiness and all other 
attributes that enter into the idea of an infinitely perfect Be- 
ing. 

“Every minister of religion who ascends a pulpit,” says 
Bishop John J. Tigert, “may assume that the common people 
before him, the men and the women of unsophisticated intelli- 
gence, even though professedly irreligious, are immovable 
believers in God and their own souls. These, I say, are truths 
he may assume; truths he is not required to prove. When 
he enters upon processes of philosophical proof, he commonly 
weakens his position; for the popular conviction is at once 
_ profounder and clearer than the reasons that most men can 
allege on behalf of it.” If this were true of all people, of 
uncommon people as well as of “common people,” there would 
be no need for arguments such as we are now proposing to 
present to prove the existence of a God possessed of attributes 
which together constitute the absolute perfection of personal 
being. But that the statement referred to cannot apply to all 
men in the judgment of Bishop Tigert is shown by the fact 


that it is taken from the early part of a volume on Theism, 
233 


234 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


in which he proceeds to set forth all the traditional theological 
and philosophical arguments to establish faith in the existence 
of a Divine Being. 


I 


THE NECESSITY AND VALUE OF REASON IN 
RELIGION 


Do we not sometimes find ourselves wondering and asking 
why God has not revealed himself and his attributes and pur- 
poses so plainly to all men as to make it unnecessary to reason 
about his existence and attributes at all? Why did he not 
save us the trouble of so much thinking about him? Or, if 
we are to think and reason, why did he not make our reasoning 
to be like a simple problem in mathematics, something demon- 
strable beyond the possibility of a doubt, or of any difference 
of opinion whatever. And not only thus concerning himself, 
but more—why did he not make every object of knowledge so 
plain that we should not have to reason and speculate about 
anything as to what it is, in which case all men would think 
exactly alike about everything, and there would be no differ- 
ence of opinion about anything. Why did he not make his 
divinely inspired book, the Bible, so simple, clear and plain 
that there could be no misunderstanding it and no difference 
of opinion whatever about anything in it? In this case all 
men would think exactly alike, and believe exactly the same 
things about God, the Bible, and all other things—the only dif- 
ference being, perchance, that intellectual growth might involve 
necessarily differences in degrees of knowledge. 

What a world this would be if everybody thought and 
believed and knew exactly the same things as everybody else 
about God and everything else, and we did not have to specu- 
late and reason concerning anything to reach a conclusion— 
or, if we must reason, everybody would necessarily reach 
exactly the same conclusion! And thus by following out to 
its inevitable conclusion the line of thought with which we 
started, we reach a reductio ad absurdum that results in prov- 
ing to us that if we did not have to think and speculate and 


THROUGH REASON TO GOD —— - 935 


reason about things this life of ours would be such a monoto- 
nous, dead-level, non-thinking, non-reasoning, uninteresting, 
form of existence that we would long to be transported to 
some world where we could find somebody that differed from 
us about something, and where our intellectual life could have 
the fascination of thinking and speculating and reasoning about 
things, even about God himself, who he is, what he is, and 
where he is. 


1. The Place of Reason in Religion 


“Come, let us reason together,” saith the Lord. The reality 
of the divine existence, according to Professor Calderwood, 
author of “The Philosophy of the Infinite,” “is a truth so 
plain that it needs no proof, as it is a truth so high that it 
admits of none.” Many pages of philosophy and theology 
would never have been written if the views of all men had 
been in accord with this statement of the distinguished Scotch 
philosopher and teacher. But whatever of truth may be in- 
volved in the claim that man possesses a divine “‘instinct’’ or 
“{ntuition”’ or “innate knowledge’’ of God that is antecedent 
to all his thinking and reasoning concerning the existence, the 
nature and the attributes of the Divine Being, men have found 
it impossible to study nature and its laws, or life and its condi- 
tions, or man and his attributes, and not relate them in a ra- 
tional way to some Force, or Power, or Person that has been 
designated as Deity. Nor do theists who discredit and discard 
the ordinary “Theistic arguments” that have long been used to 
prove God’s existence fail to furnish evidences, arguments and 
proofs in abundance whenever they substitute for these time- 
honoured arguments a method of writing about the Divine 
Being and his attributes which, though claiming to be different, 
is quite the equivalent of the arguments discarded by them. 
Their new method turns out to be nothing more nor less 
than the presentation of the reasons why we interpret and 
must interpret the Cause of all things in terms of intelligence, 
personality and power as the only adequate solution of the 
problem of finite existence. So, think about God and reason 
about God and his relation to all existing things, men will 


236 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


and must, to the end of time. And if man’s nature within 
and his environment without compel him to think and reason 
concerning the First Cause, and the final end of all things, 
it must be that there is a conclusion to be reached as the result 
of his thinking and reasoning. The theist finds the conclu- 
sion to be the definite conviction that all things owe their 
existence to a personal God. 

Bishop F. J. McConnell tells us in one of his books about 
an old-time writer who once found reason to marvel at the 
universe because it was “established upon the floods and 
founded upon the seas.” The world to him was a wonder of 
balance,—the dry land resting steadily upon a surface of 
water! The Psalmist’s conception of the world—(if, indeed, 
that was his conception and not a mere poetic expression )— 
has passed away, but not his reason for marvelling at the 
universe. Indeed, our reason for marvelling at the wonders 
of the universe are infinitely greater than those of the Psalm- 
ist. And this is so because our thought has not maintained 
a standstill steadiness but rather a steadiness of direction in 
the midst of a sea of changes. The system of Christian be- 
liefs is like a ship which holds to her course and gets ahead 
in spite of some rolling. The balance of the ship is shown 
not in never yielding to the waves, but in never capsising, in 
an inevitable swing back when she has rolled too far to one 
side. There are discomforts in such travel, but we advance 
best by letting the ship roll. Better rise and fall with some 
ocean swells than to have our vessel becalmed and motionless 
on a dead-level, smooth, waveless and windless sea. Both the 
pitch and the roll may help us forward. That ship is the 
best instrument which best gets us ahead. It is thinking, 
and speculating and reasoning and discussing thoughts and 
things that alone keeps. us moving ahead. If we did not have 
to think things through and reason about them with wide 
margins for others to differ with us and from us, it is a 
question whether life would be worth living. Life is best as 
it is, as God has made it. It is best that faith should include 
and not exclude reason and reasoning. Were it otherwise we 
would not be rational beings. 


THROUGH REASON TO GOD 237 


2. The Value of Logic in Theistic Argument 


b) 


Logic comes from the Greek “Logos,” a term of large sig- 
nificance, which includes among its important meanings both 
“reason” and the “word,” which, as a thought-bearer, is the 
outward and formal expression of reason. Words are ve- 
hicles of thought and reason, and when combined and arranged 
into a formal discourse and argument they constitute a process 
of “reasoning,” and this also is one of the meanings of the 
Greek “logos.” “Reason,” “words,” “discourse,” “argument,” 
“reasoning’’—these meanings and uses of the term from which 
“logic” comes, explain how and why the science of logic may 
be called a path that leads to God. 

Logic is the name given to that branch of mental science 
that concerns itself with relating thoughts and truths to each 
other and drawing conclusions in and through a process of 
reasoning. It was at one time treated as a branch of philosophy 
which was then divided into psychology, logic, ethics, and 
metaphysics. While logic is a science in itself—a science of 
the laws of thought and of reasoning—it is really and truly 
an instrument employed by the sciences for the discovery of 
truth and the attainment of knowledge. By analysing the ele- 
ments, principles and structure of arguments, it enables us 
to detect errors and avoid fallacies in reasoning and thus to 
establish conclusions and attain to certitude in all the realms 
of thought and study where men are seeking truth and knowl- 
edge. But the highest use that can be made of logic is to 
guide man in and through thinking and reasoning to a knowl- 
edge of God, to an ever increasing knowledge of him. 

Logic is akin to mathematics. Just as when two numbers 
are added to each other, or multiplied by each other, or sub- 
tracted the one from the other, a certain other number is the 
result, so may two or more statements of truth be related to 
each other in such a manner that, if two statements called 
premises be true a third must follow as an inescapable con- 
clusion; or, if three be true, and be correlated to each other, 
a fourth must follow; and the human mind is so constituted 
that, if there be no error in the statements made, or in the 


238 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


way the premises are related to each other, it can no more 
properly deny the conclusion arrived at than it can deny the 
results reached by correct mathematical calculations. Well- 
nigh all the knowledge we possess is based upon results reached 
by logical reasoning. The reason why the logical conclusions 
of scientists, philosophers, theologians and others who engage 
in reasoning, are far from having the acceptance accorded to 
them which is accorded to mathematically established results, 
is not because of the untrustworthiness of logic as a science, 
but because experience proves that the statements of truth in 
premises and in relations established between premises by 
those who engage in reasoning are rarely ever absolutely free 
from error. There are a thousand chances to one that some 
error, small or great, will creep undetected into the complicated 
statements involved in argument, and therefore it must be 
that the trustworthiness of conclusions will be proportioned to 
the confidence we have, or do not have, in the absolute accuracy 
of all the statements and processes involved in the reasoning. 
But, in spite of these limitations upon the trustworthiness of 
logic, it is involved in all our thinking and reasoning and 1s 
at the foundation of well-nigh all our knowledge. Even the 
knowledge derived from consciousness and from experience 
involves relating things to each other and drawing conclusions. 
Intuitive truth alone is independent of logic. The process of 
reasoning upon which we are now to enter to prove the exist- 
ence of God involves all the strength and all the weakness 
that is incident to logic. : 

There are many lines of thought which, though not begun 
with a view to leading the mind to God, do nevertheless, as 
it were by an unconscious and undesigned process of logic, 
conduct to the conclusion that such a Being must exist. Man 
sometimes finds himself running on to God when and where 
he was not looking for him. He constructs premises to prove 
something else, but when the premises converge, whatever 
else they are found to have proved or failed to prove, the con- 
clusion reached involves as a necessary implication the exist- 
ence of a divine personal Being. “The earlier chemists set 
out to find the philosopher’s stone,” says Dr. W. J. Moulton, 


THROUGH REASON TO GOD 239 


“but it was never there; and in the search they found many of 
the secrets of nature. So the early navigators set out to find 
the North-West Passage. There was no passage to find, but 
they discovered a new world. So the earlier hypothesis of 
God may be said to have been useful in its day, but left 
behind for us. The difference is that no other hypothesis has 
been found to take the place of God, and that whilst our 
spiritual needs are as clamant as ever there is no way of meet- 
ing them unless we can find God. 

“Moreover, there is much more to be said, even from the 
logical point of view, for faith in God. We have seen men 
setting out from very different needs, dependent, moral, intel- 
lectual, social, to find some basis for life. Hence they have 
spoken of God in varying terms. But the God that satisfies 
the conscience has been found to satisfy also the mind and 
the heart. The God revealed in Jesus Christ has been found 
to satisfy human nature as a whole. . . . When a hypothesis 
framed to explain one set of phenomena was found to explain 
many other facts which were not at first present to conscious- 
ness at all, that is the surest mode of verification known to 
science. So we claim here that the view of God which unifies 
life, explains human history, and gives hope for the future, is 
confirmed by a mass of evidence that becomes more and more 
impressive the longer: it is considered.”’ * 


LE 
THE GREAT ARGUMENTS OF THEISM 


The great arguments by which it is claimed God’s existence 
and personality are proved are usually stated in theological and 
philosophical terms, but the lines of thought which they cover 
are not confined to theologians and philosophers, but are the 
common property of all thinking men. If men think at all— 
if their thoughts are directed towards the origin, the nature 
and the end of things—they must think and reason about 
God’s existence and nature. The thoughts of a scientist may 
be occupied wholly with things as they are, with nature and 


1“The Certainty of God,” p. 103. 


240 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


its operations and laws; but a philosopher, if he be true to 
his high calling, must inquire in the causes of things—into 
their first and final causes, their determining and efficient and 
formal causes—and in so doing he is compelled to think of 
God or find some substitute for him which can explain the 
cause and purpose and end of things. A philosopher must 
be a theologian, even though his theology be atheism. 
There are certain great lines of thought that are the high- 
ways of reason along which the minds of men have travelled 
in their thoughts concerning God ever since thinking and 
reasoning began. These familiar lines of thought were long 
ago formulated into rational arguments, and these arguments 
are an important part of the contents and the history of theism. 
They are not relied upon in our day as much as they once 
were to convince men that there is a God and that he is a 
Being possessed of all the attributes and perfections of per- 
sonality. But if there ever was any force of truth in them, 
it must be there still. Certainly the time has not come, and 
can never come, when the elements of truth which they con- 
tain will fail to impress profoundly all candid thinking minds, 
even though to many they fall short of furnishing the con- 
vincing proofs which many others claim for them—or which 
at least was once claimed for them. The reaction against these 
traditional arguments has in my judgment gone too far. 
Surely there is enough truth in them to make a restatement 
of them, a new statement of them, a desirable thing in a 
treatise which undertakes to make a more or less general survey 
of the more popular paths of human thought that lead to God. 


1. The Argument of Descartes, the Founder of Modern 
Philosophy 


“I think, therefore I am” (Ego cogito, ergo sum), is a 
terse sentence, which was coined by Descartes, the founder of 
modern philosophy, and which perhaps more than any other 
one sentence may be called the starting point of modern philos- 
ophy. An analysis of the contents of this brief utterance 
reveals four things: (1) “I,” which carries along with it the 
idea of individuality, personality, and spirituality in the sub- 


THROUGH REASON TO GOD 241 


ject; (2) “think,” which carries along with it the idea of 
life, consciousness, and mind; (3) “therefore,’’ which carries 
along with it the idea that mind not only is conscious and 
thinks, but reasons and draws inferences, which implies that 
the mind is so constituted that by a primary and fundamental 
law of its being it concludes that if two things be related 
to each other in such and such a manner a third must follow; 
(4) “am,” which carries along with it the idea that existence 
is something actual and not merely ideal. 

While existence, however, may be inferred with infallible 
certainty from self-consciousness, yet self-consciousness cannot 
be inferred from existence—whatsoever thinks therefore exists, 
but it does not follow that whatsoever exists therefore thinks. 
Not all existence, therefore, is alike. Self-consciousness and 
rational existence is differentiated from mere existence. It 
is, however, with the third member of this quaternion of pri- 
mary and fundamental facts that we are here and now con- 
cerned—that which is involved in the “therefore” of the mind, 
the reasoning faculty of the soul, what it is, whence it is, and 
whither it is. If the mind appears to be quiescent and passive 
and introspective in the act of consciousness, it is only an 
appearance and not a reality; for the mind is and must be 
active; even consciousness is an act of the mind by which 
self is differentiated from not-self. Motion, not rest, is the 
law and life of mind; and as the mind acts and moves it 
compares and relates things; it reasons and must reason. If 
the fact of my very existence comes to me as a result of 
reason, and is a “therefore”? deduced from other facts and 
premises, then may we say that practically all of our knowledge 
is dependent upon reason. We wish to inquire what is the 
answer that reason gives to the question whether or not there 
be a God; and if there be a God, who and what he is. 

The following is Descartes’ own statement of the process 
of thought by which he arrived at the idea of God and the 
conviction of his existence: 


“By the nature of God I understand a Substance infinite, in- 
dependent, all-knowing, all-powerful, and by which I myself 


242 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


and every other thing that exists, if any such there be, were 
created. But these properties are so great and excellent that 
the more attentively I consider them the less I feel persuaded 
that the idea IJ have of them owes its origin to myself alone. 
And thus it is absolutely necessary to conclude, from all that 
I have before said, that God exists; for though the idea of 
substance be in my mind owing to this, that I myself am a 
substance, I should not, however, have the idea of an infinite 
substance, seeing I am a finite being, unless it were given me 
by some substance in reality infinite. And I must not imagine 
that I do not apprehend the infinite by a true idea, but only by 
the negation of the finite, in the same way that I comprehend 
repose and darkness by the negation of motion and light; 
since, on the contrary, I clearly perceive that there is more 
reality in the infinite substance than in the finite, and therefore 
that in some way I possess the perception of the infinite before 
that of the finite—that is, the perception of God before that of 
myself, for how could I know that I doubt, desire, or that 
something is wanting to me, and that I am not wholly perfect, 
if I possessed no idea of a being more perfect than myself, 
by comparison of which I knew the deficiencies of my 
natures in 


2. The Ontological Argument 


The argument of Descartes is sometimes designated as the 
“anthropological” argument, but it is generally treated as a 
form of what is known as the ontological argument. The 
significant word, “ontology,” which furnishes the name of 
this argument, is derived from two Greek words, on, ontos, 
the present participle or noun derived from eimai, the verb 
“to be,’ and logos, which means the word, the expressed 
thought, the doctrine, reason, cause, ground, argument. An 
ontological argument, then, is, if it be true to its name, an 
argument based upon and derived from the nature of being 
or the fact of existence. The first postulate of reason is, as 
we have seen, that which infers self-existence from self-con- 
sciousness. But as the act of self-consciousness involves a 
distinction between self and not-self, the mind does not stop 
with inferences about self, but begins at once and inevitably 


1 “Meditations,” III, p. 21. 


THROUGH REASON TO GOD 243 


to reason about that other implication of consciousness, the 
“not-self.”’ 

The first postulate of reason that points in the direction of 
Deity is drawn from the fact of existence thus: Something 
exists, therefore something must always have existed. Ex 
nihilo nihil fit—Out of nothing nothing comes. If there ever 
was a time when absolutely nothing existed, then it is abso- 
lutely impossible that anything could ever have come into exist- 
ence. Time always has been and space always has been, but 
these two concepts, time and space, are not so much things 
existing as they are necessary conditions of existence. So far 
as the mere mental act is concerned we can conceive of absolute 
nonentity, that is, of everything that now exists being non- 
existent; for, if we can think out of existence this and that 
individual thing, we can think all things out of existence—but 
we cannot think away time and space. 

Whatever is uncaused and eternal exists necessarily. This 
applies to three things—viz.: time, space, and some being. 
Time had no beginning, and can have no end. Space had no 
beginning, and has and can have no boundaries beyond which 
it does not extend. But while I can, as a mere matter of 
thought, conceive of the non-existence of this thing, of many 
things, and of all existing things, it is at the same time true 
that, now that something actually exists, I cannot conceive 
that the time ever was when absolutely nothing existed and 
something spontaneously came into existence out of time and 
space. Reason, then, demands that we believe that, as some- 
thing now exists, therefore something has existed from eter- 
nity. This proves that an eternal Being of some kind, an 
eternal Something, from which all things now existing have 
come, has always existed. 

Seeing that something now exists, there is no truth more 


evident to the human mind than that something must have aa 


existed from eternity. ‘The human mind immediately rejects 


as a self-evident absurdity the proposition that this universe, ug : 
or anything, could have originated from nothing. The infinite °* 


God is needed as much to explain the existence of an atom, 
or of a dewdrop, as he is to explain the existence of a sun 


244 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


or a system of worlds.” Give me but one grain of sand, 
said Cousin, and I will prove that there is a God! 

The ontological argument in its traditional form differs from 
what we have here given, and may be stated thus:—We have 
the idea of an absolutely perfect Being. An essential element 
of absolute perfection is existence. To affirm that an abso- 
lutely perfect Being who actually exists is greater, more per- 
fect, than such a Being that exists only in idea, is self-evident. 
A perfect Being then that exists only in idea and not in reality 
is not absolutely perfect—is far from perfect, in that he would 
lack a most essential quality of perfection, namely, actual ex- 
istence. Actual existence, therefore, it is argued, is involved 
in the very idea of an absolutely perfect Being; or, to state the 
same thought differently, a perfect Being which exists in mind 
carries along with it as a necessary inference the actual ex- 
istence of such a Being. This was the claim of Anselm and 
other philosophers and theologians of like mind. The correct- 
ness of this inference, however, is by no means self-evident, 
and the argument in this form is considered of no value by 
many who yet believe in the existence of such a perfect Being. 
This argument grew out of Descartes’ philosophy, among the 
primary and fundamental postulates of which was not only 
Ego cogito, ergo sum, “I think, therefore I am,” but also Deus 
cogitatus est, ergo Deus est, “God is thought (that is, is an 
object of thought), therefore God is.” This last, however, is 
by no means self-evident like the former, and cannot, there- 
fore, be relied upon as an argument to prove the existence of 
God. But to say that inasmuch as something now exists 
therefore something must always have existed is a statement 
of the ontological argument which is absolutely undeniable. 
And that “Something”’ which is back of all other things we are 
fully justified in calling divine Being. 

“If there were no God,” says Ralph Cudworth in his “In- 
tellectual System of the Universe,” endorsing the position both 
of Descartes and of Anselm, “the idea of an absolutely or 
infinitely perfect Being could never have been made or feigned, 
neither by politicians nor by poets, nor by philosophers, nor 
any others.” 


THROUGH REASON TO GOD 245 


Now it will be noted that we have presented the ontological 
argument here in three different forms, which we now name 
in the reverse order in which we have given them. 

(1) In its Anselmic form, as an inference drawn from the 
idea of a perfect Being in the mind that such a Being must 
actually exist. (2) In its Cartesian form, as an inference 
drawn from the idea of God in the mind that such a super- 
human idea could only have come into the mind of man by 
God himself placing it there. In neither of these forms do 
we count the argument at all conclusive. (3) But, in the 
third form in which we have presented it, it is unanswerable 
in proving all that it claims to prove, namely, that Something 
has existed from all eternity. This third form of the argument 
justifies itself in the etymology of the word, being an argu- 
ment from “being” (which is the meaning of the Greek on, 
ontos, participle of einat, “to be’). From the fact that Some- 
thing now exists the conclusion is irresistible that Something 
must always have existed. If it be claimed that the argu- 
ment as thus stated, being an argument from “effect” back 
to “cause,” invades the province and purpose of the argument 
(Cosmological) which comes next in order, the statement 
will not be denied, except to the extent of saying that each 
of these successive arguments includes within itself all of the 
argument that goes before it. Each argument, however, ad- 
vances much beyond what its predecessor proves—as, for ex- 
ample, the essence of the cosmological argument is included in 
the larger and more comprehensive “teleological” argument 
up to which it leads, and the essential truth of this argument 
in turn is involved in the still higher and better “moral” argu- 
ment up to which it logically leads. 

But the important thing to note is that, whatever form this 
argument takes in making its appeal to different minds, it is 
to all alike a path that leads to God. 


3. The Cosmological Argument 


Two Greek words, kosmos (from kosmeo, to arrange, or 
put in orderly form) and aetiologia (an inquiry into the causes 
of things), have both been used by philosophers in their efforts 


246 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


to find an appropriate name for another of the great theistic 
arguments that are employed to prove the existence of a Divine 
Being whose intelligence and power are sufficient to account 
for things as they are. From a careful consideration of the 
orderly arrangement of the universe, both as a whole and in 
all its parts, and a recognition of the fact that nothing happens 
in this universe of being that is not related to something 
antecedent to it as a cause and something following it as an 
effect, comes what is known as the Cosmological or /Ztiological 
argument for God’s existence. 

The entire universe, as far as we know it, is under the 
reign of a uniform and everywhere prevalent law of cause 
and effect. The conviction that every effect must have a cause, 
and that the cause must always be adequate to account for 
the effect, is one of the deepest and most fundamental con- 
victions of the human mind. It matters not whether this con- 
viction is an intuitive truth—that is, a primary and funda- 
mental idea of the mind, not derived from experience and 
reason—or whether it is a conviction arrived at by experience 
and by a process of reasoning, the conviction itself is universal, 
and all human thinking is based on the assumption of its truth. 
To say that every change must have a cause is virtually the 
same as to say that every effect must have a cause, inasmuch 
as effects are always changes. The world and the entire range 
of human life abound in changes and effects. 

The entire universe of which our world is a part is believed 
to be, both as a whole and in all its parts, a series of changes 
and effects that can be accounted for in only one of two ways: 
—either the present series of causes and effects has been going 
on forever without any beginning and is intrinsically auto- 
matic, or else all things had their determining and originating 
cause at some definite past time in the free will of a Being 
whose power to create and preserve and govern all things 
constitutes an entirely adequate cause and explanation of the 
universe. The latter alternative is generally regarded as by 
far the more rational of the two. But in either case the exist- 
ence of an Eternal Cause of things follows as a necessary 
deduction of reason. Whether there be a personal God or 


THROUGH REASON TO GOD 24:7 


not has not been settled by this argument, but we have proved 
two things: first, that there is an Eternal Being; and, sec- 
ondly, this Eternal Being has possessed from eternity power 
sufficient to be an adequate Cause of all things as they now 
exist. If matter and its properties, or matter and force, be 
found sufficient to account for everything that is known to exist 
—as some people profess to believe is the case—then all that 
this argument has done for us is to lead us to materialism 
and make it fitting that we should at least so far deify Matter 
and Force as to spell them with capital letters, while waiting 
to see if further arguments will not compel us to pass from 
materialism to theism. 


4. The Teleological Argument 


We are now ready to go a step further and affirm that the 
human mind is so constituted that it must believe not only 
that every effect must have a cause, but that whatever is in 
the effect must be in the cause, either actually or potentially 
present. This is known as the “teleological” argument—from 
the two Greek words, telos, end or design, and Jogos, reason. 
If it is impossible that something should come into existence 
out of nothing, then is it equally impossible that there should 
be in the effect, anything greater than the cause. If the effect 
shows evidences of mind, then there must be mind in the cause. 
If there is life, consciousness, personality, spirituality, free 
will, conscience in the effect, then these things must be, at 
least potentially, in the producing cause. Supposing there was 
once a time when there was nothing but matter (star dust, 
for example) in existence, is it conceivable that life and mind 
and free will could come spontaneously into existence out of 
matter as we now know it? Human reason answers, No— 
so, at least, unless matter or star dust had life germs and 
“mind stuff” and volitional energy in it from all eternity. 

Whatever is evolved from matter must have been always 
involved in matter; but our very idea and definition of matter 
involves a radical and essential distinction between mind and 
matter. They belong to totally different orders of being. Even 
if matter, as we know it, were supposed to be eternal, it could 


248 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


not, even with eternity at its command, originate mind and 
spirit, free will and conscience. Matter cannot create and 
originate anything. Mind and spirit can create and originate 
some things—ideas, volitions, motion. And we know by ex- 
perience that mind can influence and control matter. Indeed, 
a large part of the life and activity of mind or spirit consists 
in jts domination over and control of matter, including the 
vegetable and animal world. 

We know what inorganic and inert matter is in itself alone; 
and we know what the same matter is when brought under 
the control of mind. It is the difference between mere sand 
and clay and water and minerals as they exist in nature, and 
these same materials when put into the form of houses and 
churches and schools and factories and machinery and engines 
and clocks and watches. Indeed, one of the best evidences and 
manifestations of mind is that which is thus found in matter 
that has been brought under the control and arrangement of 
mind. 

The world about us in its arrangements and adjustments 
reveals the unmistakable signs of mind. The relation of the 
earth on which we live to the sun, its revolution around the 
sun, and its rotation upon its own axis, the atmosphere, the 
distribution of land and water, the adaptation of the soil 
to vegetable life and of vegetable life to sustain animal life, 
and lower animal life to minister to that which is higher— 
these are but a few of the many instances of that widespread 
adaptation of one thing to another, of the lower to the higher, 
that reigns throughout the material, vegetable, and animal 
world, and bears every mark of the presence and influence 
of a designing mind upon matter—a mind that must be either 
in matter itself, or outside of the matter which gives evidence 
of being controlled by intelligence. 

Besides and above this, here are living beings that have 
personality, consciousness, spirituality, free will, moral natures, 
consciences. Whence came these things? Certainly not from 
matter as we know it. We are thus compelled by reason to 
search for an adequate Cause for these things; and only a 
Cause which itself possesses life, personality, spirituality, mind, 


THROUGH REASON TO GOD 249 


free will, a moral nature, can possibly originate beings having 
these attributes, or could so create, arrange and control the 
physical, vegetable, and animal world as to make them exhibit 
as they do the infallible signs of an all-controlling Intelligence 
in their adjustment and adaptation to each other. 

Rational beings always act with reference to an end. What 
is last in realisation is first in mind, and hence is the cause 
of all that is done. The presence of design,—that is, the evi- 
dence that things have been planned and performed with ref- 
erence to a certain end—is an unfailing sign of mind. The 
world is full of evidences of design, and therefore of proof 
that the Power that has made existing things what they are 
is a rational Being whose mind is revealed in the laws of 
nature and in all the marvellous adaptations and adjustments 
to €ach other that are found in the mineral, vegetable, and 
animal kingdoms. Some of these we have already presented 
in detail in previous chapters where they were introduced as 
proofs of a designing Mind reigning in and over our world. 

Kant, although he did not himself think the teleological 
argument was as conclusive a proof of the existence and wis- 
dom of God as was claimed for it, has given a most satisfactory 
statement of its contents: 


“(1) There are everywhere in the world clear indications 
of an intentional arrangement carried out with great wisdom 
and forming a whole indescribably varied in its contents and 
infinite in extent. (2) The fitness of this arrangement is 
entirely foreign to the things existing in the world, and belongs 
to them contingently only, that is, the nature of different things 
could never spontaneously, by the combination of so many 
means, co-operate toward definite aims, if these means had 
not been selected and arranged on purpose by a rational dis- 
posing principle, according to certain fundamental ideas; (3) 
there exists, therefore, a sublime and wise cause (or many), 
which must be the cause of the world, not only as a blind and 
all-powerful nature, by means of unconscious fecundity, but 
as an intelligence, by freedom; (4) the unity of that cause 
may be inferred with certainty from the unity of the reciprocal 
relations of the parts of the world, as portions of a skilful 


250 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


edifice, so far as our experience reaches, and beyond it, with 
plausibility, according to the principles of analogy.” * 


Kant is frequently represented as “rejecting” this argument 
as invalid. This is not a true statement of his attitude towards 
it, as shown by his reference to it in the following language: 
“Although we have nothing to say against the reasonableness 
and utility of this line of argument, but wish, on the contrary, 
to commend and encourage it, we cannot approve of the claims 
which are made for it, that it reaches apodictic certainty, nor 
can we approve of its merits as being so great that it requires 
no favours and needs no help from any other quarter.” Of 
the argument itself he says: 


“Tt is the oldest, the clearest and most in conformity with 
human reason. It gives life to the study of nature, deriving 
its own existence from it, and thus constantly acquiring new 
vigour. It reveals aims and intention where our own observa- 
tion would not by itself have discovered them, and enlarges 
our knowledge of nature by leading us toward that peculiar 
unity the principle of which exists outside nature. ‘This 
knowledge reacts again on its cause—namely, the transcen- 
dental idea—and thus increases the belief in a supreme Author 
to an irresistible conviction. It would, therefore, be not only 
extremely sad, but utterly vain, to attempt to diminish the 
authority of that proof. Reason, constantly strengthened by 
the powerful arguments that come to hand by themselves 
(though they are no doubt empirical only), cannot be discour- 
aged by any doubts of subtle and abstract speculation. Roused 
from every inquisitive indecision, as from a dream, by one 
glance at the wonders of nature and the majesty of the cosmos, 
reason soars from height to height till it reaches the highest; 
from the conditioned to conditions, till it reaches the supreme 
and unconditioned Author of all.” ? 


“The more I study nature,” says Mr. Darwin, “the more 
I become impressed with ever-increasing force with the conclu- 
sion that the contrivances and beautiful adaptations slowly ac- 
quired through each part occasionally varying in a slight de- 


1 “Critique of Pure Reason,” Miiller’s translation, II, 536, 537. 
2 Ibid., 534-530. 


THROUGH REASON TO GOD © 251 


gree but in many ways, with the preservation or natural selec- 
tion of those variations which are beneficial to the organism 
under the complex and ever-varying conditions of life, tran- 
scend in an incomparable degree the contrivances and adapta- 
tions which the most fertile imagination of the most imagina- 
tive man could suggest with unlimited time at his disposal.” 
This means either one of two things—‘“mind-stuff” in matter 
or Mind back of and over matter—of which two alternatives 
the latter is surely the more rational. 

“Matter as an unformed mass existing without relation of 
parts,’ Dr. Thomas Chalmers declares in his ‘Natural The- 
ology,” “would not of itself have suggested the notion of a 
Creator. In the mere existence of an unshapen and unorgan- 
ised mass we see nothing that indicates the non-eternity of 
matter or its derivation from an antecedent mind.” He thinks 
it well, therefore, that revelation has resolved for us the other- 
wise insoluble mystery and given us distinctly to understand 
that to the fiat of a great Eternal Spirit matter stands indebted 
for its existence and its laws, as well as for its numerous 
collocations of use and convenience. He thus held that with- 
out a revealed theology we should not have known of the crea- 
tion of matter out of nothing, and that from the useful dis- 
positions of its parts alone is the need of an intelligent Author 
to be inferred. “The one impresses the understanding just 
as differently from the other as a stone of random form lying 
upon the ground impresses the observer differently from a 
watch. The mere existence of matter in itself indicates noth- 
ing. It is the combinations of matter and its organic struc- 
tures which alone speak to us of a Divinity—yjust as it is not 
the clay, but the shape into which it has been moulded, that 
announces the impress of a Designer’s hand.” 

We are inclined to think that if Dr. Chalmers could have 
seen what he calls “unshapen and unorganised matter” “‘exist- 
ing as an unformed mass without relation of parts,’ under a 
modern microscope—if he could have known of the marvellous 
revelations of radium in the study of molecules and atoms which 
has been made possible by modern science—he would have been 
compelled to so far revise his idea of “matter as an unformed 


252 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


and unshaped mass” as to see in it as a “manufactured”’ article 
such order and adjustment of part to part, of atom to atom 
and element to element, as calls for “its derivation from an 
antecedent Mind.” 


5. Ihe Moral Argument 


Man’s nature furnishes in conscience a sure evidence that 
it came from and is akin to a moral God. The most significant 
and momentous decisions of the human will are not those 
which concern matters that are purely intellectual or merely 
emotional. It is when the decision of the human will involves 
a matter of right and wrong, involves moral responsibility, 
and is followed by moral consequences, that it takes on its” 
highest significance. It is in the presence within man of 
what we call conscience, the moral consciousness that has to 
do primarily with the right and wrong of free volitions and 
acts, that we find that argument for the existence of God 
which many regard as the most convincing of all arguments. 
What makes one thing right and another thing wrong? And 
how did conscience get in us, and come to have such an 
authoritative voice in commanding us to do one thing and not 
to do another—a voice none the less authoritative because it 
may be and often is disobeyed? What is the ultimate source 
of ethics? Is it in matter? Is it in social environment? And 
if it be recognised that social environment and custom have 
much to do with determining what in any given case is re- 
garded as right or wrong, does it follow that this is the origin 
of ethics and of the distinction between right and wrong? 
Or will a careful and. scientific search for an adequate cause 
and explanation of moral distinctions and moral law in the 
world, and of conscience within man, drive us to a moral God 
as the only rational explanation of the origin of moral crea- 
tures and of the moral world in which they live? This can 
be the only answer to the why of right and wrong that can 
satisfy the reason of rational beings. 

Neither materialism nor pantheism can furnish any satis- 
factory explanation of the origin of ethics and conscience nor 
any but a fickle foundation for obedience to what may be rec- 


THROUGH REASON TO GOD 253 


y 


ognised as moral law. “I shall discuss human actions,’ said 
Spinoza, the father of modern pantheism, “just as I do human 
appetites, and both actions and appetites just as if it were a 
question of lines, planes or solids.” But human conduct, it 
must be answered, is not a matter of lines, planes and solids; 
and motives cannot be thus measured on a quantitative scale. 
The satisfaction which a noble soul finds in doing his duty,— 
and this at the sacrifice of physical good, and it may be, even 
at the cost of life itsel{—is not to be compared with any satis- 
faction of appetites. The peace of the saints in the love of 
God is not to be expressed in words of physical satiety.’ 

It is in the predominant choice of one kind of pleasure over 
a different kind of pleasure that character is revealed. General 
Robert E. Lee, after the close of the Civil War, declined a 
salary of a hundred thousand dollars offered him if he would 
consent to be president of a commercial organisation; but he 
chose instead to be president of a college where he could teach 
Southern boys, and this he did on a salary of only twelve hun- 
dred dollars a year. In declining to allow his devotion to the 
South and the esteem in which he was held to be commercial- 
ised either in his own behalf or by others for their financial 
gain he revealed the moral greatness of his character. Pro- 
fessor Agassiz of Harvard declined large sums of money 
offered him if he would go out on a money-making tour of 
lectures, saying that he was too busy with his important work 
as a scientist and a teacher to turn aside to making money. 
When materialists and pantheists undertake to treat great moral 
volitions and acts like these as they treat physical appetites 
and to measure them as they do lines and planes and solids, 
they show their own moral impotence in trying to account for 
and explain morals without a moral God. Conscience with 
its categorical imperative, “thou must,’ and the moral law with 
its inescapable sanctions, are witnesses to the existence of a 
universal moral government that absolutely demands a supreme 
moral Governor whose eternal, uncreated moral nature ex- 
presses and reveals itself in moral creatures and moral law— 
and conscience. 


1See Smyth’s “Christian Ethics,” p. 39. 


254 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Religion and ethics are so related that, if each is what it 
ought to be, they not only may but must serve each other. As 
to which is to be regarded as the more important, this is a 
question that depends on what is in mind as the point of em- 
phasis. If religion is thought of as the recognition and wor- 
ship of God, then it takes precedence over ethics, seeing that, 
so defined, it is the foundation and inspiration of ethics. If 
ethics be viewed as the right regulation of conduct and the 
attainment of the highest ideal of moral character in individ- 
uals and nations, and religion be regarded as one of the many 
forces working for these ends, then ethics is the greater, the 
end, and religion a means subservient to the end. That re- 
ligion ministers in many ways to a higher and finer ethics, 
and that ethics enters into and ministers continually to religion, 
are among the axiomatic truths of Christianity. Religion de- 
void of ethical ideals and contents of a higli order is a force 
that works for evil in proportion to the moral baseness of 
its ideals, and may be worse than no religion at all. Buta 
religion that is infused with lofty ethical ideals is the greatest 
power for good known to man; for such a religion finds its 
culmination and crown, its end and earthly goal, in that ethical 
manhood and womanhood to produce which is the one great 
purpose for which the kingdom of God exists in the earth. 
When the religions of the world are judged by this standard, 
the one which furnishes above all others this ethical credential 
of its superiority, simply asks that those who are seeking evi- 
dence and sitting in judgment will read the history of civilisa- 
tion and of human progress and find the men and nations that 
have believed it and lived out its ethical ideals, and it will have 
no fear as to the verdict. In the ethical life and ethical teach- 
ings of Jesus Christ is found the moral dynamic of the Chris- 
tian religion; and Christianity furnishes the one and only 
dynamic that is equal to the world’s moral needs. 

The science of Christian ethics is built on the moral character 
of God. The following propositions are its fundamental prin- 
ciples: (1) God’s eternal, uncreated nature is the ultimate 
source of all moral good, and the origin of that which makes 
right to be right, and the opposite of right to be wrong. (2) 


THROUGH REASON TO GOD 255 


The will of God whenever and wherever revealed is the ex- 
pression of his moral nature. (3) Christ, the Son of God, 
is the perfect expression in personality and life of both the 
nature and the will of God. (4) The Bible is the best expres- 
sion in all literature of the mind and will of God. The revela- 
tion of God’s will in the Old Testament is partial and imperfect 
but progressive in its approach to an accurate interpretation and 
expression of the mind and will of God, while the New Testa- 
ment, in so far as it perfectly reproduces and records the mind 
and words and acts of Christ, is a perfect revelation of the 
nature and will of God. (5) The Bible teaches ethical prin- 
ciples rather than ethical rules, rules being the interpretation 
and adaptation of ethical principles to specific but more or less 
mutable conditions—principles remaining ever the same while 
the rules that interpret and adapt them to conditions may and 
do change. 

But what we have to go by in ethics in the last analysis, 
is not God’s nature and will, or Christ and the Bible as they 
really are, but man’s interpretation of God, of Christ, and the 
Bible; and this is a resultant and expression of the common 
Christian consciousness, that is, of: “all the knowledge and 
experience which Christian believers have gained of Christ, 
and which consciousness becomes in its turn a kind of law to 
the Scriptures—the law of their interpretation, of their criti- 
cism and of their verification.” The Christian consciousness 
as thus defined and appraised becomes, then, for the body of 
believers at any given time and in any given land, the accepted 
arbiter and determiner of who and what God is, and of what 
standard of right is to be applied to human conduct. What 
God is, is one thing ; and what men think him to be, is another. 
The latter is what God really is to any generation, be the 
interpretation true or false. Every reinterpretation of God 
is, or ought to be, a more perfect interpretation than that 
which preceded it. The attainment of perfect ethical manhood 
waits on the perfect interpretation of God; and this ethical 
goal is in a sense the end and aim of the revelation of God 
in Christ; ‘““Till we all come in the unity of the faith and of 
the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto 


256 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.’”’ God's 
great work is making men; perfect men are his crown and 
glory. In proportion to the accuracy and comprehensiveness 
of the knowledge of God possessed by men and to the fidelity 
with which their lives and characters are made to conform to 
this knowledge, do men attain to the divine ideal. 

However vital God’s relation to physical nature is, his rela- 
tion to human nature is even more vital. And God does his 
work in this realm of human nature in and through man, and 
not only in and through individuals, and by occasional inter- 
ventions, but he works in and through men collectively, in 
and through nations, and the entire race, and not for a day 
only but all the time. God’s government of physical nature 
is expressed in the uniformity of nature’s laws; and the perfect 
adaptation of these laws to each other gives unity to nature. 
God’s government of human nature, of men individually and 
collectively, is through the free agency and self-determining 
power of each individual. But, in spite of the variety and in- 
dependence which this seems to give, there is an organic unity 
in human nature which makes the whole race one; and the 
history of the human ‘race properly studied and interpreted 
proves that—to use Matthew Arnold’s familiar phrase—‘“there 
is a Power not ourselves that makes for righteousness.” It 
is because this “Power” that makes for righteousness is rational 
and moral and personal, that in the course of centuries there 
can be seen a moral philosophy of history. The ultimate moral 
goal of humanity, the far-off divine event towards which, in 
the purpose of God, the whole creation tends, comprehends in 
its scope the entire human race and covers all time. Only in 
the progressive realisation of a divine purpose and an ethical 


end like this can we find a moral argument altogether worthy 
of God. 


6. Consensus Gentium 


There is an additional argument for believing in the exist- 
ence of God which, unlike all others, may yet be said to include 
and reinforce all other arguments in that it finds in the uni- 


THROUGH REASON TO GOD 257 


versality of faith in the existence of some kind of deity a 
profound reason for believing that a universal and abiding 
conviction of the entire race cannot be a delusion and deceit. 
Semper, ab omnibus, ubique—what has been believed always, 
by everybody, everywhere, can be a false faith only on the 
assumption that the human race is so constituted as to be by 
nature subject to delusion in the greatest and most important 
of all matters of faith. Such a bill of indictment against the 
entire human race only a few have been daring enough to 
make—and even those who have discovered for themselves 
that there is no God, and that all who believe in such a Being 
are mistaken and deluded, as a rule betray, in their attempts 
to explain the problem and mysteries of existence, the fact 
that they have really disguised rather than denied God. For 
whatever may be the Force, or Energy, or Power, that has to 
be predicated, in order to explain and account for things, it is 
simply “God in disguise.” John Fiske, it will be remembered, 
not only believed in the truth of this universal conviction of 
the human race, but found in its universality and persistence 
and truth his greatest argument for evolution, which means 
the adaptation of all life to environment, to an environment of 
real not imaginary and unreal things. He believed that the 
universal out-going after God which has always characterised 
the human race, is the outgoing after a real and not an imagi- 
nary Being. Whether John Fiske’s use of the universality of 
man’s faith in God be justified or not, there can be no doubt 
of the force of the inference drawn from “consensus gentium,” 
that a faith so old, so extensive, so intensive, so dominating, 
as is the faith of the human race in God, must have at its base 
a great Reality. 


And after furnishing all these arguments in proof of the 
existence of God and claiming for them varying degrees of 
validity and strength, we must yet concede that no one of them, 
indeed that not all of them put together, can furnish proof 
so convincing as to be intellectually compelling. “We have 
no proof of the existence of God,” says Bishop McConnell, 


258 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


“which will make any one believe, whether or no, without a 
venture of faith. Kant once said that the wisdom of the Al- 
mighty had been shown quite as much in what had been with- 
held from us as in what had been revealed. We shall get on 
best by conceding the limitations of our mental instruments.” 

In apparent keeping with this thought, Tennyson makes 
“The Ancient Sage’ to say: 


Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone, 
Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone, 
Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one; 
For nothing worthy proving can be proven, 

Nor yet disproven. 


So writes the great poet laureate, but who can read his “In 
Memoriam’ without feeling that whether we call his thoughts 
concerning God and Christ “proofs” or not, the intellectual 
process by which he reaches a conclusion may well be titled 
“Through Reason to God,” and justify us in “believing where 
we cannot prove.” And does not his “Higher Pantheism”’ 
give strong reason for believing in God? Thus: 


The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains, 
Are not these, O soul, the vision of Him that reigns? 

Law is God, say some; no God at all, says the fool; 

For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool. 
God is law, say the wise; O soul, and let us rejoice, 

For if He thunder by law, the thunder is yet His voice. 


CHAPTER TEN 


THROUGH THE BIBLE TO GOD 





CuarTerR TEN 
THROUGH THE BIBLE TO GOD 


The Bible opens with a majestic sentence, the moral 
grandeur of which not even inspiration could easily surpass: 
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” 
The Bible is pre-eminently “God’s Book’’—it begins, continues, 
and ends with God. It is a Deo, de Deo, in Deum—it is 
from God, concerning God, and leads to God. The reason 
why it more than any other book leads to God is because 
it more truly than any other book is from God and concern- 
ing God. We wish to consider some of those characteristics 
of the Bible that have made it the world’s best guide-book to 
God. It is the Bible doctrine of God which more than any- 
thing else has made it the supreme handbook of theism for 
the world. We believe that God has spoken to man in and 
through the Bible as he has not in and through any other 
book; but if it were nothing more than is claimed for it by 
many students of comparative religion—simply one among 
many books of natural religion—it must still be recognised as 
primus iter pares, the first among its equals. How can we 
explain this fact of its primacy in the religious literature of the 
world? 

The greatest possible service that a divinely inspired volume 
can render to men is to give them what history proves nature 
and reason cannot supply, namely, an altogether worthy 
and satisfying conception of God and proper guidance in 
tightly relating themselves to him. And the greatest possible 
proof that a volume can furnish of its being divinely inspired 
is for it to contain and set forth a doctrine of God that is 
so high and exalted that the human mind can conceive of 
and desire nothing that is higher and more perfect. Our 


special interest in the doctrine of Biblical inspiration, so far 
261 


262 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


as these present studies are concerned, is connected with the 
doctrine of God. We desire to examine the Scriptures with 
reference to what they teach concerning God, his nature, char- 
acter and attributes. The study of the Biblical revelation con- 
tained in this chapter will present a general survey of the 
Scripture teachings concerning God without any reference to 
critical questions which may come up for consideration in later 
chapters. 

If ever the divine has appeared in literature, it is certainly, 
as every person of thought and intelligence must admit, in 
that collection of writings which we designate as the Chris- 
tian Scriptures, especially the New Testament. Never before 
in the history of the world has the Bible had so many readers, 
and never before has it had such influence in the world, as it 
has to-day. And yet never before have traditional opinions 
concerning it been subjected to scrutiny and criticism to such 
an extent as of late. Some have thought that the modifica- 
tion or abandonment of traditional views concerning the 
Bible, which has taken place under recent critical study on 
the part of many, indicates an abandonment of faith in the 
Bible as a divinely inspired and authoritative book. But this 
inference is unwarranted. Faith in a given view of Biblical 
inspiration is not to be confounded with faith in the Bible itself. 
To deny this or that view of inspiration is not the same as 
denying the fact of divine inspiration. 

Let us now see how the doctrine of Deity runs like a 
thread of gold through all types of Biblical literature, some- 
times obscure and hidden indeed beneath the surface, but never 
lost—and then again coming to the surface and finding glori- 
ous expression in language that is in every way befitting a 
divine revelation given by inspiration of God. “The Bible,” 
says Dr. Lyman Abbott, “is a guide to revelation, not a sub- 
stitute for it. Only as we so use the Bible that we stop not at 
the Book, but go through the Book to the God who gave it 
forth, are we worthy to be prophets and preachers of this 
twentieth century.” 

We wish here and now to survey the Bible in a general way 
and see what, in its main outlines, is the conception of God that 


THROUGH THE BIBLE TO GOD 263 


is progressively unfolded in its successive and varied types 
of literature. 


I 
THE OLD TESTAMENT REVELATION OF GOD 


There are five general types of literature found in the Old 
Testament and each of these bears its lofty testimony to the 
greatness, the holiness and the goodness of God. History, 
poetry, prophecy, wisdom literature, and apocalyptical litera- 
ture—all find a place in the Old Testament. These various 
types of literature are to be distinguished from each other; 
but the different books of the Old Testament cannot be sepa- 
rated and distributed according to this classification with any 
degree of accuracy, seeing that some books embody two or 
three, or even four, types of literature. 


1. God in the Pentateuch 


The most venerated portion of the Old Testament, that 
variously designated as the Pentateuch, or the Law, or the 
books of Moses, is mainly historical; but it also contains 
poetry and prophecy. The book of Genesis, no matter when 
or by whom it was written, is a most remarkable literary pro- 
duction, and is in every way worthy of the place which it 
occupies at the beginning of the inspired volume. Consider- 
ing the early date of the events which it describes, and the 
length of time which its history covers, the high character 
of its ethics as compared with the heathen nations around 
them, and its lofty spiritual conception of God, it is not easy 
to see how such a work could have been produced except by the 
aid of divine inspiration. No one can read the books of the 
Pentateuch without discerning here and there in the majestic 
words and the profound interpretations of events which they 
contain the presence and voice of God. Only one who. has 
attained to a high and comforting conception of God could 
write words like these, found in the Pentateuch :—‘“The 
eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting 
arms.” 


264 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


After all possible allowance has been made for the human 
element in these early narratives, there still remains an ele- 
ment so transcendent, so much above the power of man to 
invent or create, that it can only be explained as the self-revela- 
tion of God—a revelation, however, made to and through men 
who, it must be recognised, were subject to and conditioned 
by the intellectual and moral limitations of the early age in 
which they lived. God’s revelations of himself to Noah, to 
Abraham, to Jacob and Joseph and Moses, if studied as the 
earlier stages of a progressive revelation, have a permanent 
value even though they fall far short of the revelations of 
himself made to men in and through Christ. The moral value 
of the Ten Commandments in the revelation which they make 
of God is the richest asset in the religion of the ancient world. 
Commands imply a commander, and these Commandments are 
inexplicable without a divine Commander. They are the voice 
of God not only to Israel in the wilderness of Sinai, but to all 
men of whatever age or nation who would seek a better and 
a heavenly country, a city that hath foundations whose maker 
and builder is God. Even admitting that these Pentateuchal 
books were given their present form at a later date, and that 
some later conceptions of religion are found in them, it is not 
easy to overestimate their value in the history of religion, 
especially in their contribution to the progressive revelation of 
God which moved ever onward and upward to, and finally 
culminated in, our Lord Jesus Christ, who, as God incarnate, 
interpreted God in terms of Fatherhood and love. 


2. God in Hebrew History 


The purpose of Old Testament history was not, we may 
say, to make a complete and infallible record of all historical 
facts, but rather to present a divine philosophy of history; 
to interpret events in a religious way and to explain from 
the divine side certain important facts of history that were 
especially valuable for the moral lessons they served to teach; 
to point out the evils of sin and the blessings of righteous- 
ness; to bring to light God’s hand in human history and show 
that he is not a silent spectator of human affairs but the 


THROUGH THE BIBLE TO GOD 265 


supreme moral Governor of the universe to whom individuals 
and nations alike owe allegiance. That the Biblical history is 
more accurate and trustworthy than any other ancient history 
can easily be shown; but this is not the all-important point that 
differentiates the Biblical narratives from all other histories. 
That differentiating point is to be found in the everywhere- 
present and all-dominating moral purpose that runs through 
the Biblical history—a feature entirely lacking, for example, 
in the histories of Greece and Rome. ‘The fact that God has 
left it absolutely unknown when or by whom a large portion 
of the Bible records were written warns us against attaching 
too great importance to questions of this kind.  Inspira- 
tion shows itself in the realm of history not so much in making 
an absolutely accurate and infallible record of facts as in 
teaching infallible and useful moral lessons from the facts 
recorded. In Bible history, then, as in no other historical 
writings, we can trace God’s hand in the history of our race. 
As we journey along the pathway of Old Testament history, 
we are never out of sight of God. Whether the reader may or 
may not be disposed to agree with the writer in the way in 
which he relates God to passing events, there is no mistaking 
the fact that the omnipresent and ever-active God is there, 
not only looking on but taking an active part in whatever 
transpires. 


3. God in the Prophetical and Apocalyptical Writings 


That the prophets were inspired and spoke with divine au- 
thority is a truth which no one will doubt who believes that 
inspiration and divine authority are to be found anywhere in 
the Bible. That “the word of the Lord came unto them’’ is 
proved not more by the fact that they said it did than by 
what they say. Such true conceptions of the character and at- 
tributes of God, of sin and man’s need of moral renovation by 
divine power, such denunciations of wickedness of all kinds, 
such Godlike exhortations to righteousness, such spiritual con- 
ceptions of God’s kingdom, such moral courage in delivering 
their messages in the face of persecution and martyrdom, 
such visions of the coming Messiah—if these characteristics 


266 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


of the prophets do not prove that God talked to them and 
communed with them, and sent them to declare his will, then 
nothing could prove it. The messages of such prophets, 
though primarily addressed to Israel and Judah, become, when 
properly interpreted, messages of righteousness and truth to all 
nations for all time, revealing Jehovah in all the greatness of 
his character as the God of all men everywhere. 

The Apocalyptical writings combine history and prophecy ; 
they are prophetic and symbolic visions of the future expressed — 
in terms of history, interpreted from the point of view of 
God’s part in the making of it. The book of Revelation in the 
New Testament, and certain portions of Ezekiel, Daniel, and 
Zechariah in the Old Testament, may be named as the most 
notable examples of apocalyptical literature. The symbolic 
visions of the future found in these writings are based on © 
faith in the all-controlling sovereignty of God, who not only 
has in his hands the destiny of individuals, but the rise and 
fall of empires as well. The destiny of nations no less than of 
individuals is determined in God’s righteous government by 
moral character. 

“Apocalyptic was really a sort of Jewish philosophy of 
religion, an attempt to reveal the future purpose of God for 
the world with a view to the establishment of faith in difficult 
days,’ says Dr. J. Y. Simpson. “It may be said that the 
writers of Apocalyptic books were ‘Catastrophists’ as opposed 
to the older ‘Uniformitarians’ (the prophets) who, on the 
whole, looked for a gradual moral reformation in the life 
of the nation, although some of them (as, for example, Amos 
and Isaiah) were not forgetful of ‘the day of the Lord.’ To 
the Apocalyptic mind things had gone too far; the world 
was too evil to be the possible subject of moral change. 
Nothing short of a complete ending of the present dispensa- 
tion and the commencement of a new age visibly inaugurated 
by God himself would be of any avail. But the Apocalyptist 
was more supermundane in his ideas of the Messianic King- 
dom than the Old Testament prophet. He tended, on the 


THROUGH THE BIBLE TO GOD 267 


whole, to push the consummation more and more into the 
future.” * 


4. God in the Wisdom, Literature 


Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job are the most notable ex- 
amples in the Bible of what is known as Wisdom literature. 
Many of the sayings found in the Book of Proverbs seem 
to be mere expressions of worldly wisdom, and yet not a few 
of them bear a distinctly ethical and religious form. But as 
a matter of fact the whole book, if interpreted compre- 
hensively, is not only moral and religious, but it is deeply 
philosophical and spiritual in that it finds the only true and ulti- 
mate basis for right conduct and righteous character in faith 
in God, in that God has established such an order of things 
that the highest good can be realised in this life only in and 
through right conduct and righteous character. Indeed no 
book in the Bible relates God so closely to worldly wisdom and 
makes success and real happiness in life to be so closely related 
to faith in God and obedience to his wise laws as do the 
writings of these wise men of Israel. The writer of Ecclesi- 
astes is sometimes referred to as the pessimist of the Bible. 
He had evidently had experience in sin and in the evil con- 
sequences of sin beyond that of most men; and the philosophy 
of human life, viewed from the standpoint of sin and of the 
suffering and shame which it produces, is nothing but “vanity 
of vanities: all is vanity.” 

But out of such morbid views of life, born of sin, inspira- 
tion guides to a conclusion made all the more impressive and 
glorious by contrast with the dark and gloomy background 
contained in the body of the book—viz., “Remember thy 
Creator in the days of thy youth”; ‘Fear God, and keep his 
commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.” 

The book of Job was written to refute the idea that seems 
to have been long prevalent among the Jews, and has not even 
yet disappeared from the world, that the natural and physical 
evils that befall one in life are sent by God as a punishment 


1“Man and the Attainment of Immortality,” p. 282. 


268 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


for sin. The why of evil, both physical and moral, in the 
universe of an all-good and all-powerful God, is a problem 
that will present itself anew to thinking and perplexed minds ~ 
in all ages of the world. If the book of Job does not solve 
the problem and answer all our questions, it at least throws 
a flood of light upon it which inquiring and truth-seeking 
spirits will ever gratefully welcome. “I call the book of - 
Job,” says Thomas Carlyle, in his “Heroes and Hero Wor- 
ship,’ “apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest © 
things ever written with pen. One feels indeed as if it were 
not Hebrew, such a noble universality, different from noble 
patriotism or sectarianism, reigns in it. It is our first and 
oldest statement of the never-ending problem—man’s destiny — 
and God’s ways with him here on this earth. And all in such 
free, flowing outlines; grand in its sincerity, in its simplicity, 
in its epic melody and repose of reconcilement. There is the — 
seeing eye, the mildly understanding heart. So true every 
way; true eyesight and vision for all things; material things 
no less than spiritual. A noble book, all men’s book!’ No 
one can read Job thoughtfully and the other Wisdom books 
and not feel that the God of the prophets is talking to him in 
and through these sayings of Hebrew Proverbial philoso- 


phy. 
5. God in the Psalms 


We speak of poets as possessed of a “divine gift,” and as 
being “inspired.” If this be true of poets generally as such, 
how much more truly may it be said of the only divinely in- 
spired poets, those of Holy Writ! John Bright, the distin- 
guished English statesman, once remarked to Mr. Gladstone 
that he was content to. rest upon the book of the Psalms alone 
the whole question as to whether or not there is a divine 
revelation from God to man. He said that it was incon- 
ceivable to him that a book so immeasurably exalted above 
all the religious literature of antiquity could have been pro- 
duced by man without special and supernatural aid. “And 
all the wonders of Greek civilisation heaped together,” re- 
joined Mr. Gladstone, “are less wonderful to me than is the 


THROUGH THE BIBLE TO GOD 269 


simple book of the Psalms—the history of a human soul in 
relation to its Maker.’’ A purer monotheism is nowhere to 
be found than in the Psalms. The spirituality, omnipotence, 
omniscience, omnipresence, holiness, goodness, love and other 
attributes of God are set forth here in a clearness and variety 
of form that makes the Psalms a perfect treasure-house of 
knowledge concerning God. The God of the Psalmist is not 
only the Creator and Preserver of all things, but he is a prayer- 
hearing and a prayer-answering God to whom every truly 
penitent and trusting soul can appeal with confidence of being 
heard. The Psalmist’s God, so full of tender mercy and 
loving-kindness, is surely none other than the God whom 
Jesus taught us to call “our Father.” 

The only portion of the Old Testament which we ever find 
bound together single and alone with the New Testament is 
the Book of Psalms, indicating that this book of prayer and 
praise has in a sense passed over into and become a part 
of the New Testament as is true of no other portion of the 
Hebrew Scriptures. We pass, therefore, by easy transition 
from the God of the Psalms to the God of the New Testa- 
ment. 


Il 
THE NEW TESTAMENT REVELATION OF GOD 


“Literature has its miracles, and the New Testament is a 
literary miracle;’ so writes an appreciative and enthusiastic 
student of the Sacred Canon. And in what does he find the 
proof that the New Testament is a “literary miracle’? It 
ig this :— 

“Its writers were a cluster of Galilean fishermen and 
peasants; there was only one man of genius and scholarship 
in the group. And yet this book has reshaped the history 
of the world. In Stratford-on-Avon stands a great building 
in which all the books which were written about Shakespeare’s 
plays are gathered. But if all the books which have caught 
their inspiration from the twenty-seven tiny pamphlets which 
constitute the New Testament were gathered together, no 


270 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


building ever yet erected by human architecture could contain 
them. That tiny book has built every church throughout 
Christendom. It has inspired all missionary effort. Its 
words are written on the tombstones beneath which our dead 
sleep. And the original inspiration which Christ promised was 
not confined to the men who wrote it. It is in the book itself 
to-day; it is within the reach of every reader of the book, and 
all Christian experience attests that fact.” * 

There are two ways in which the reader of the New Testa- 
ment finds himself approaching God: first, in the revelation 
of him as the loving heavenly Father, under which title Jesus 
referred to him with such emphasis and insistence as to make 
it impossible for us to think of him in any other light and 
relationship than that of divine Fatherhood. But the more 
one reads the New Testament the more he finds himself learn- 
ing what God is like, and what he is, not only in and through 
what Christ says of him, but in and through what Christ is in 
his own person and character. So much of God does Christ 
seem to have in himself as shown by what he says, and does, - 
and is, that the only term that seems adequate to express what 
men think of him is to call him “God incarnate.’”’ When the 
New ‘Testament therefore reveals God to us as one who is 
related to us (1) as a Divine Father and (2) as Deity in- 
carnated in our humanity, it brings God nearer to us than had 
hitherto been conceived possible. 


1. The Fatherhood and Love of God 


The first and greatest service which Christ rendered to the 
human race by his teachings was—and this is a truth which — 
we must needs utter and repeat over and over again—to reveal 
God as a Father and to make him lovable. There are three 
notable ways in which Christ revealed the Fatherhood and 
lovableness of God:— (1) By showing that love is the 
leading attribute in God’s nature, and that this divine love 
takes in the entire human race: “God so loved the world.” 
And its imtension is as deep as its extension is broad: “God 
so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son.” 


1Dr. W. H. Fitchett. 


THROUGH THE BIBLE TO GOD 271 


There is no expression of self-sacrificing love known to 
human thought greater than parting with an only son. Love 
begets love; and nothing but love can beget love. God wins 
our love by his love for us. We love him because he first 
loved us. 

(2) By revealing himself as the Son of the Father, and 
showing that his Father—who was also our Father—was like 
him. He was the image of the Father, so that to see him was 
virtually to see the Father; and as the visible Son was the 
personal embodiment of everything that was lovable and win- 
ning, it was impossible not to love the invisible Father, who 
is in all respects like the Son. 

(3) By showing us that God craves our love first and above 
everything else. The craving of a soul reveals its true inner 
nature. God not simply commands us to love him, but he 
_ craves our love. This shows that his inmost nature is love. 
Whatever reveals that God is love makes God a lovable Being. 


2. The Divine Sonship of Christ 


The first three books of the New Testament, commonly 
called the Synoptical Gospels, present in historical form a 
synopsis of the leading events in the life of Christ. It is pre- 
eminently the facts concerning the human Christ with which 
they are occupied. Only towards the last do they reach the 
point of clear and definite declaration of his deity. But no 
matter how far back they go in tracing his human genealogy, 
and no matter how closely they follow the life he lived in 
the flesh, they are always moving towards a goal—through the 
human to the divine-human, and through the divine-human 
to the divine transcendence—to the declaration of his deity as 
“the Son of the living God.’ Nevertheless it is not to the 
Synoptic Gospels but to the writings of St. John and St. Paul 
that we must turn for that interpretation and presentation of 
Christ that never leaves us anywhere or at any time in doubt as 
to whether or not the writer believes him to be divine. Of 
the twenty-seven books of the New Testament eighteen come 
from these two writers—and the book of Acts, though written 
by St. Luke, is so thoroughly dominated by the mind and utter- 


272 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


ances of Paul as to make it proper to add it to the Pauline 
literature. In other words more than two-thirds of the New 
Testament comes from the two writers whose interpretation 
of Christ in terms of deity is the most dominant characteristic 
of their writings. 


3. Paul’s Interpretation of Christ as God Incarnate 


Of these two, John, though first as a disciple and apostle, is 
last as a writer. Indeed the very earliest of the New Testa- 
ment writings were certain Epistles of the Apostle Paul. 
Although in the matter of coming into the Christian fold Paul 
describes himself as one “‘born out of due season,” in the 
making of the literature of the Christian Scriptures he is in 
the opinion of Biblical scholars the pioneer and forerunner of 
all the New Testament writers, which fact gives to his writ- 
ings a unique place of both historic and doctrinal importance. 
For this and other reasons the highest significance attaches to 
his conception of God and to his interpretation of the Person 
of Christ in terms of Deity which changed the whole current 
of his life and completely transformed his faith. As the 
result of a most remarkable experience, he was led to believe 
not only that Christ was the long expected Messiah of the 
Hebrew Scriptures but even more—he was the eternal Son of 
God who became incarnate in human form for the salvation 
of mankind from sin. 

No student of the Pauline Epistles can fail to see that the 
most conspicuous feature of the theology of Paul is its 
Christocentric character. Everything is treated with reference 
to Christ. The greatness and glory of Christ as a Saviour 
are portrayed in ever rich and glowing colours over against 
the dark background of Jewish legalism, from servile bondage 
to which Paul was saved only by the personal power of the 
crucified but risen Redeemer, who was, to his faith, both God 
and man. Paul refers the work of creation entirely to Christ. 
(Col. i. 16.) His doctrine of sin and its dominion over man 
is closely connected with his conception of Christ as the 
second Adam, who breaks its dominion. (Rom. v.) God is to 
Paul “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,’ and the most 


THROUGH THE BIBLE TO GOD 273 


conspicuous attributes in the divine nature are those revealed 
in and through Christ. The love of the Father finds its most 
practical and helpful interpretation in the gift of his Son and in 
the life and death of Christ who laid down his life for the sal- 
vation of men. He emphasises the great work of the Holy 
Spirit in the reproduction and development of the Christly 
character in man. Paul’s doctrine of prayer, of justification, 
of the Christian life, of the future life—these and many 
other doctrines all centre in and radiate from the divine Lord- 
ship of Christ.1 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the 
love of God the Father are divine blessings of co-equal value 
that represent the highest and best that Heaven can give to 
men on earth. 

St. Paul magnifies God’s love for all mankind; and the great- 
est expression of that love he found, as does every New 
Testament writer, in God’s gift of his only Son, who was in 
the bosom of the Father and the express image of his Person. 
But there is one divine attribute that finds its clearest and 
strongest expression in Paul’s writings. Paul more than any 
other Biblical writer sets forth the eternal foreknowledge and 
purpose of God in creation and redemption; but these have 
respect always to man’s moral free agency and responsibility. 
If what God is now doing is in accord with the exercise of 
perfect freedom on the part of men, then it follows that 
God’s foreknowledge and definite purposes in eternity con- 
cerning men were also in perfect accord with human freedom. 
He taught that God elects and predestinates; but men are 
“elect according to the foreknowledge of God” and “whom 
God foreknew, them he predestinated.’’ If God’s knowledge 
of a free agent’s present volition is not the cause of it, but, 
on the contrary, the volition is the cause of the knowledge of 
it, the like relation must exist between divine foreknowledge 
and whatever is foreknown: the thing foreknown, be it a free 
volition or something else, must be the cause of the fore- 


1Dr. H. B. Carré finds in the “Cosmic Significance” of Christ’s redemp- 
tive work the truth which St. Paul most of all emphasised and magnified 
in his interpretation of Christ as Redeemer and as the revealer of God’s 
purpose and method of redemption. See his volume titled “‘Paul’s Doc- 
trine of Redemption.” 


274 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


knowledge of it. No attribute of God is more superhuman 
and divine than that of foreknowing how a free agent is going 
to decide a matter that is conditioned on his free will. But the 
divine omniscience includes the foreknowledge of all events 
whether they be dependent for their determining cause on 
the Divine Will or on human free wills. It is God’s purposes 
and plans in and through Christ and his foreknowledge of 
the result of Christ’s redemptive work that make it a work 
not of unknown contingency but of foreknown certainty as to 
the final issues; it is this confidence in God’s knowledge and 
wisdom and love and power that makes Paul’s doctrine of 
divine foreknowledge and predestination one that is full of 
comfort, and the foundation of the largest possible optimism 
as to the future. ‘‘Nevertheless the foundation of God 
standeth sure, having this seal: The Lord knoweth them that 
are his, and let every one that nameth the name of Christ de- 
part from iniquity.” There are no contingencies so far as 
God’s knowledge is concerned; and if man wishes to remove 
all contingencies from his knowledge of the future pertain- 
ing to himself, here is indicated the way in which he may do 
it—let him depart from all iniquity. 


4. St. John’s Interpretation of Christ as Divine Love 
Incarnate 


John’s connection with Christ began several years before 
Paul’s conversion, and yet he outlived Paul some thirty 
years, as indeed he outlived all those who along with him- 
self were associated with our Lord during the days of his 
flesh. Being the youngest of the group and “that disciple 
whom Jesus loved,’ there is every reason to believe that he 
combined, along with his intimate personal knowledge of 
Jesus, an intellectuality and spiritual discernment that would, 
mark him out as the one best suited to write the final word for 
the New Testament Canon before it closed and give the final 
interpretation of Christ that was to come from the Apostolic 
group. 

The ethical and spiritual interpretation of the Person and 
work of the historic Christ is the task which St. John under- 


THROUGH THE BIBLE TO GOD 275 


took to perform in writing the fourth Gospel, and so success- 
fully did he accomplish this task that it has been considered 
the consummation and crown of the entire body of New 
Testament writings. 

The author of the fourth Gospel tells us toward the close 
what motive he had in writing it: “These are written, that ye 
might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and 
that believing ye might have life through his name.” This 
conclusion is in perfect accord with the great cardinal truths 
enunciated in the opening verses to this Gospel. The first 
chapter strikes the lofty keynote of the entire book in assert- 
ing (1) The pre-existence and deity of Christ: “In the be- 
ginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the 
Word was God.” (2) Christ is the Creator of all things: 
“All things were made by him; and without him was not any- 
thing made that was made.” (3) He was not only Creator, 
but the Source of all life and light: “In him was life; and the 
life was the light of men. . . . That was the true light, which 
-lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” (4) The in- 
carnation: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among 
ised ot orace and: truth): ~ (5) whe relation of faith 
and the new birth to each other and to Christ: “As many as 
received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of 
God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, 
not of blood, nor of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, 
but of God.” (6) His teachings as to the Godhead may be 
summed up in declaring that God is a spiritual Being, sus- 
taining the relation of Father to all men, but especially to them 
that believe; that the leading attribute of his nature is love; 
- that his love for man has found its most perfect expression in 
the gift, first, of his own eternal Son as Redeemer and, 
secondly, of the Holy Spirit to apply the benefits of Christ’s 
redeeming work to the salvation of men. 

But these doctrines all seem to grow out of his main proposi- 
tion, which is never lost sight of—viz., Jesus Christ, the divine 
and eternal Son of God, incarnated to reveal God as a Father, 
and to save lost sinners and make them sons of God. When 
we think of the circumstances under which the fourth Gospel 


276 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


was written and by whom—how that it was written from sixty 
to sixty-five years after the crucifixion, and nearly forty years 
after the other Gospels had been written, and by one who was 
on terms of closest intimacy with our Lord during his entire 
ministry and who, both because of that personal association 
and because of the ripened conviction of more than sixty 
years of meditation, profoundly believed that his Lord was 
none other than the eternal Son of God come in the flesh, 
and that this fact of his divinity was the one supreme fact 
concerning his person and work which transcended in im- 
portance every other fact—when we take all these facts into 
consideration, it cannot seem strange that John should feel 
moved to write, and should be divinely inspired to write, a 
volume which should set forth and emphasise the divinity of 
Christ as the culmination of the New Testament revelation of 
God. 


III 


SUMMARY OF THE FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS OF 
BIBLICAL THEISM 


This survey of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testa- 
ments with special reference to their teachings concerning God 
has brought out five notable and cardinal facts as to the na- 
ture and attributes of the Divine Being which serve to dis- 
tinguish the Biblical conception of God from that of all other 
religions, and which, although enumerated before in answering 
the question, ““Who is God?”, need to be referred to again at 
this point, to make a complete presentation of the Bible doc- 
trine of God. 


1. The Umty of God 


The Divine Unity means that there is and can be but one 
God, and is opposed to the polytheism of the heathen reli- 
gions. The only pure monotheism known to the ancient world 
was that found in the Hebrew religion. Notwithstanding 
the fact that all religions of human origin have had “gods 
many and lords many,” and the religion of the Bible alone has 


THROUGH THE BIBLE TO GOD 277 


affirmed the oneness of God, yet human reason, when once en- 
lightened, perceives that there is and can be but one God. To 
affirm the existence of many gods is to deny the existence 
of any real and true God. Many gods mean no God. When 
our Lord was asked what was the first and greatest com- 
mandment, his answer was: “The first of all commandments 
is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our:God 1s one Lord.” | This 
part of our Lord’s reply—affirming that the assertion of the 
unity and personality of the divine Being was the fundamental 
fact in Israel’s faith—is too often overlooked. But it would 
be just as improper to stop here and not quote the significant 
words which follow and are a part of the very same sentence: 
‘And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,—which conjunction of 
divine unity and human love implies that faith in the unity 
of God is essential to any and all real love to God. To believe 
in many gods is to love no God at all. Polytheists fear their 
gods but never love them. Only those who believe in one God 
are capable of exercising that highest of all creaturely acts of 
devotion and worship—love, adoring love. 


2. The Spirituality of God 


When the Scriptures declare that “God is a Spirit; and 
they that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth,” 
it is not so much a revelation of his possessing the attribute of 
spirituality, as it is a declaration that his essential nature is 
spirit. Spirit has none of the properties of matter. A spirit 
has consciousness, intelligence, moral nature, freedom and 
similar attributes, none of which are predicable of matter. 
Man has a physical and a spiritual nature, a visible body and 
an invisible spirit. The latter is the true self, the true ego, 
that which makes him capable of worship. There could be no 
such thing as spiritual religion if God were not a Spirit; and 
whatever in man’s consciousness assures him of his own 
spirituality proves to him at the same time that God is a 
Spirit; for from an infinite divine Spirit alone could finite 
human spirits come. The Scriptures in revealing God as a 
Spirit mean to teach not only that God is not a thing, made of 


278 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


wood or stone, as heathen gods are, but also that he is not 
possessed of two natures, physical and spiritual, as we are— 
that he has no corporeal form that may be perceived by the 
physical senses, nor can he be represented by anything material 
or visible to the eye. God is possessed only of such attributes 
as we call spiritual in ourselves. Although, being a Spirit, 
he is invisible—and without bodily parts, he is yet spoken 
of at times as if he were possessed of body as well as spirit— 
this anthropomorphic representation of him is an accommo- 
dation to our modes of thinking, which seems to be necessary 
in order to bring infinite Personality within the categories 
of human thought. The contrast between the pure monothe- 
ism of the Bible and the gross polytheism of heathen religions, 
great as it is, is perhaps not so convincing a proof of the divine 
origin of the Bible doctrine of God as is the emphasis laid in 
the Scriptures upon the spirituality of God. This is pre- 
eminently the one feature in our faith which raises our con- 
ception of God and our religion above the sordid religions of 
the heathen world and invests it with that element of exalted 
mysticism and of mystery which is not only befitting but essen- 
tial to a religion of the spirit that is also an altogether rational 
religion, 


3. The Personahty of God 


God is everywhere throughout the Bible recognised as a 
self-conscious and rational being, distinct and separate from 
everything else in the universe. The divine personality of 
Hebrew and Christian faith is opposed to the pantheistic con- 
ception of God, which confuses Deity with the phenomenal 
world, affirming that everything in its ultimate analysis is 
God, matter being nothing but the phenomenal and ever- 
changing “existence form” of God; and hence God is incapable 
of consciousness except as he comes to consciousness in finite 
spirits, and ought, therefore, to be referred to as It, not He. 
But our individuality and personality imply and necessitate 
personality in God; for from an infinite divine Person alone 
could finite human persons come. There could be no such 
thing as personal religion if God were not himself a person. 


THROUGH THE BIBLE TO GOD 279 


The God of the Bible is thus seen to be not simply a Being 
characterised by unity and spirituality, an immeasurable, non- 
material, incomprehensible Being; but he is a Personal Being 
capable of relationship and fellowship with other personal be- 
ings. Not until personality has been added to the conceptions 
of unity and spirituality do the noblest attributes of Deity 
become possible—freedom, wisdom, holiness, love, and the 
like. This Biblical conception of God is so rational and self- 
consistent as to commend itself to every man’s reason and 
heart and conscience. No man can read the Bible constantly 
and wander very far away from the thought of a personal God. 
An infinite personality may have its difficulties to thought, but 
the difficulties that beset faith in the impersonal infinite ‘It’ 
of Pantheism are more numerous and far more serious. 


4. The Triumty of the Divine Being 


Perhaps the divinest feature of the Bible revelation of God, 
one that meets us and greets us wherever we move in Christian 
theology, is that reserved for the New Testament, which adds 
to his unity, spirituality and personality that which floods his 
Being with light and not only brings him near to us but makes 
us see him as one who is altogether lovable. Not until this 
revelation comes does it fully appear what it means for us men 
to bear the image of “Our Father, who art in heaven,” which 
is the invocation that the Bible places in the mouth of every 
one who approaches and addresses the divine Being—words 
which carry in them the high and precious privilege of divine 
sonship, making known to us that we are more than servants, 
that we are sons. In all heathenism the idea of the Father- 
hood of God has never entered, save, perchance, as the passing 
fancy or occasional metaphor of a poet. But the God of Scrip- 
ture is “one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all, who 
is above all, and through all, and in all.” 

The revelation of God as a Being whose relation to the 
human race is best expressed by the term, Father, does not 
exhaust the meaning of this most significant of all the designa- 
tions of deity. The divine Fatherhood as revealed by Christ 
goes deeper into the very nature and essence of deity than is 


280 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


indicated in his being thus related to the human race. He is 
more than the heavenly Father of mankind. He is also related 
to Jesus Christ as Father and it is revealed that he has sus- 
tained this relation from eternity. Inseparable from this 
revelation of God’s eternal Fatherhood and involved in it 
is the further revelation that there has eternally existed with 
God the Father a second Person related to him as a Son 
and bearing his own divine nature, and this Son, in order to 
save man from sin and the better to reveal God, became in- 
carnate in a historic person named Jesus of Nazareth, who 
dwelt among men and being recognised in due time as divine 
was worshipped as God. Then came the further revelation 
that a third Person has eternally existed with the Father and 
the Son, called the Holy Spirit, his nature being no less divine 
than that of the Son, and to him in a peculiar sense is com- 
mitted the dispensing of the benefits of Christ’s redemptive 
work. 

While thus affirming the existence of three different Per- 
sons in the Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the 
New Testament reaffirms and emphasises the essential unity 
of the divine Being, and the recognition of this double truth— 
that God is one in three and three in one, one in nature and 
three in personal mode of manifestation—has necessitated the 
coining of a word not found in the Scriptures, viz., tri-unity, 
or Trinity. The three persons of the Triune Godhead are 
co-equal and co-eternal; nevertheless, in the order of thought, 
God the Father comes first, as the rational principatus of 
Deity, God the Son comes second, and God the Holy Spirit 
comes third. While this revelation of God transcends, it does 
not contradict human reason. If we can believe that a thing is 
without understanding how it is—and this is true of many 
things that enter into the faith of all rational beings—we are 
not required to transgress the bounds of reason when we are 
called on to believe that God is one in one sense and three in 
another sense. 

There is no revelation of the Triunity of God except in and 
through the divine and eternal Sonship of Christ; and it is 
only in connection with the revelation of the divine and say- 


THROUGH THE BIBLE TO GOD 281 


ing power of Christ that the personality and deity of the Holy 
Spirit are revealed. Indeed it may be said that while the 
elements of the doctrine of the Divine Triunity are found in 
the New Testament, it was left to the post-Apostolic Church 
to define and formulate this most transcendent of all the doc- 
trines of Christian theism. 

This is the Bible doctrine of God in its main outlines and 
most important elements. It carries in itself the proof of its 
origin in the self-revelation of the Divine Being and is not de- 
pendent for its authority over the human conscience upon our 
rightly adjusting the divine and the human elements in the 
Bible. 


5. Lhe Post-Apostolic Development of the Doctrine of God 


We will not go far astray if we affirm that the doctrine of 
the Fatherhood and love of God really occupies a larger place 
in the thought and theology of the modern Church than it 
did in the mind of the early disciples who knew Christ in the 
flesh. They were absorbed in the living Christ, listening to his 
words, witnessing his deeds and interpreting his person in 
terms of an ever increasing divine significance which found 
its highest expression in the confession of St. Peter at Caesarea 
Philippi. The early disciples of Christ could not possibly 
take in as we can the ethical and spiritual value of the revela- 
tion of the Fatherhood of God. Their thought centred in 
the Messiah. And when he was no more the living Christ he 
became more and more as they thought of him, the divine 
Christ, until presently it came to be, as shown by the writings 
of St. Paul and St. John, that the divine Person whom they 
worshipped and who completely filled their minds and hearts 
and absorbed their thoughts, was the Incarnate Son who was to 
them not only the perfect revealer of God, but the complete 
embodiment of God—so that it came to pass that, instead 
of defining Christ by his relationship to God, they found it 
most helpful to define God by his relationship to Christ. ‘The 
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’ is the way they 
defined God. 

Nor did the doctrine of the Trinity occupy much, if 


282 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


any, place in the thoughts of the disciples in the period covered 
by the New Testament. It took time for reflection in order to 
see that a profound problem for thought and faith was in- 
volved in asserting that there was and could be but one God 
while three different Persons were yet recognised and wor- 
shipped as God. If they saw the intellectual difficulty involved 
they said nothing about it. The incarnate, divine-human 
Christ, of the seed of Abraham as to his human nature, and 
declared to be the Son of God with power as to his super- 
human nature—to interpret him in the deep, divine signifi- 
cance of his two natures—that was a problem which was left 
for later generations of Christian believers to solve. The one 
great contribution which the New Testament writers make to 
the doctrine of God is found in their interpretation of Jesus 
in terms of Deity so that he who called himself the Son of Man 
became for them the Son of God—and all subsequent history 
has proved that they did not err in so interpreting him. 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 


THE PROGRESSIVE REVELATION OF GOD 
| IN THE SCRIPTURES 


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CHAPTER ELEVEN 


THE PROGRESSIVE REVELATION OF GOD IN THE 
SCRIPTURES 


Our study of the Biblical revelation of God, contained in 
the foregoing chapter, may be said to have assumed more than 
the facts justify, that an exalted idea and altogether adequate 
knowledge of God was imparted to the human race at its be- 
ginning and maintained intact thereafter by the chosen circle 
within which God continued to reveal himself. In other 
words, it may be said that we seem to have ignored the many 
evidences that are found within the Scriptures themselves that 
the conception of God possessed by the ancient peoples whose 
religious history is traced in the Old Testament was one of 
evolution from more or less primitive, crude and confused 
ideas of Deity towards that which was higher and truer. It 
is claimed by many that the primitive idea of a tribal God 
whose power was available for his own people alone, which 
prevailed among other ancient peoples, also characterised the 
religion of the early Hebrews, and that the prophetic concep- 
tion of Jehovah as the one and only God of the whole earth 
was attained only at a later date. We must now consider to 
what extent this is true. 


I 


DIVINE REVELATION AND ITS HUMAN 
INTERPRETATION 


1. Progress of Divine Revelation Conditioned on Man’s 
Interpretation of Revelation. 


It is very important that we make a distinction between 
God’s revelations of himself and man’s interpretation of those 
revelations. God’s revelation of himself—in nature, in the 


consciousness and experience of individuals, in human history, 
285 


286 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


in his providential government of men and nations, and 
possibly in other more direct ways—needs to be clearly dis- 
tinguished from men’s recognition, apprehension and inter- 
pretation of these revelations. The slow progress made by 
man in his conception and interpretation of God is not due to 
divine tardiness, to a lack of revelation on God’s part, so much 
as to a lack, on man’s part, of spiritual insight and vision, a 
lack of properly apprehending and interpreting what God has 
revealed and is continuously revealing of himself. 

Men differ greatly as receivers of what is spoken to them— 
some take in more than others—and one really hears only so 
much as he takes in of what is uttered within his hearing. Men 
differ also greatly in the power of interpreting what they 
receive from other men, and differ in like manner in their 
power of interpreting what they receive from God. Yet again, 
men differ greatly in their power of transmitting to others 
their interpretations of what they receive. The reason why 
the Jewish race was God’s elect and chosen people in ancient 
times was not due so much to favouritism on God’s part—that 
is, to his giving them what he gave to no others—as to the 
fact that they were better interpreters of those divine revela- 
tions whose “lines went out through all the earth and whose 
words went to the end of the world.” This explains why the 
Abrahamic race rather than others were elected to be channels 
of revelation to the whole world. 

But individual Hebrews even among the prophets differed 
greatly one from another. Samuel, the prophet, was a much 
better receiver and interpreter of what God said than was 
the brusque and burly athlete Samson; but Isaiah was a better 
receiver and interpreter than even Samuel; and his better 
power of not only receiving a vision of God and interpreting 
it but of transmitting “the word of the Lord” that came unto 
him in and through the vision, has made the book that bears 
his name to be numbered among the greatest religious classics 
of the world. Among the apostles of our Lord differences in 
intellectual and spiritual capacity for receiving and interpreting 
and transmitting the truths which the Master spake to them, 
are very discernible. In all these respects St. John surpassed 


PROGRESSIVE REVELATION OF GOD 287 


his fellow apostles, even as among those born out of due 
season St. Paul in these particulars excelled those who in 
other respects might have been his equals. We are all re- 

ceivers from God, and interpreters of what we receive from 
him; and in proportion to the largeness of our receipts and 
the accuracy of our interpretations is the measure of truth or 
error in our conception of God and in our power to make him 
known to others. The self-revealing God has never had but 
one who was a perfect receiver, a perfect interpreter and a 
perfect transmitter to others of his revealed word and will— 
and that was Jesus Christ—and this is why, ever since he came, 
he takes the place of God as revealer to men, and becomes in 
what he is and says and does the very self-revelation of God. 


2. Progress in Knowledge of God Retarded by Human 
Interpreters and Not by Lack of Revelation 


Now in thus declaring that the slow progress that our race 
has made in coming to a true interpretation and knowledge 
of God is man’s fault—that it is due not to the lack of revela- 
tion on God’s part, but to those who, dull of mind and slow of 
heart, have not received and rightly interpreted the revela- 
tions he has made—not, in thus speaking, are we contradicting, 
but on the contrary exemplifying the Scripture which speaks of 
God having at different times and in divers manners in times 
past spoken unto us by the prophets, and last of all by his own 
Son. God not only does his work in this world in and through 
men, but he reveals his will to mankind in and through men, 
and the men whom he chooses as his channels of revelation are 
always those who as receivers, interpreters and forth-tellers, 
are the best human instruments available—those best fitted 
intellectually, morally and spiritually, to make known his will 
tomen. When these conditions and limitations that accompany 
the progressive self-revelation of God to men are duly con- 
sidered, it will be seen that what appears to be the tardiness 
and imperfection of these divine revelations are not due to 
God but to the human free agents who are the recipients and 
interpreters of that which is revealed. This will appear all the 
more true if we reflect that God’s revelations were not made 


288 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


audibly in spoken words, but were as a rule, we have every 
reason to believe, spoken with the still small voice of the 
Spirit to the inner man. 

“Religion,” says a recent writer, “cannot possibly rise 
higher than the stage of development of the people of whose 
ideals it is the expression. Nothing could show that process 
of development better than the Bible itself, for the early books 
of the Old Testament reveal the conception of God, character- 
istic indeed of the age, but not at all satisfying to us, for it 
was a God who was indeed benevolent and just toward his 
own chosen people, but utterly regardless of the welfare of 
those outside this chosen group. It is certain that no modern 
religious leader believes in a god who has the attributes which 
some of the early leaders of Israel ascribed to their Deity. 
This imperfect conception of God is developed and refined 
through the successive periods of sacred history as portrayed 
in the Bible until it finally culminates in the all-embracing love 
and Fatherhood of God preached by Jesus. He who would 
deny this development process going on in both science and re- 
ligion, and clearly revealed in all the records of the past which 
we have, must shut his eyes to the indisputable facts as they 
are presented in all history, including sacred history.” * 


IT 


PROGRESSIVE REVELATION’ OF GODSIN} Tis 
OLD TESTAMENT 


Nothing is more important in the study of the Old Testa- 
ment, and nothing is more necessary to its proper interpre- 
tation, than a recognition of the fact that God’s nature and 
attributes were only gradually revealed and slowly understood 
by the children of Israel. Not to recognise this fact may 
turn into a critic one who, if he should recognise and duly 
estimate the gradualness and progressiveness of the divine 
revelation, will be filled with amazement at the superior 
knowledge of God possessed by the descendants of Abraham 
as compared with all other ancient people. 


1“The Christian Century.” 


PROGRESSIVE REVELATION OF GOD 289 


I. Superiority of the Early Hebrew Narratives 
to Heathen Records 


Students of the Old Testament generally believe that the 
first six books of the Old Testament, known as the ‘‘Hexa- 
teuch,’ were composed of a number of different documents, 
varying from one another in their original dates, and con- 
taining not a few variations in their historic details and in 
their interpretations of events. Not only the books in their 
present form but the constituent documents, says Dr. Fisher, 
are considered to have been far later in their origin than tradi- 
tion had taught. The application of the principles and methods 
of literary and historical criticism and of the results of ar- 
cheological investigations in Bible lands to the study of the 
literature covering the most ancient periods of Biblical history 
have affected in many ways the interpretation of this early lit- 
erature. The Babylonian and Chaldaic accounts of creation and 
the flood found on the clay tablets unearthed many years ago 
by archzologists are so similar in most of their details to the 
Scripture narratives that it is.impossible not to infer a common 
origin. And why should it not be so, seeing that Ur of the 
Chaldees, the land that Abraham came from, is located in 
the country that yielded these archeological tablets, which so 
wonderfully confirm and reinforce the book of Genesis in 
its record of these primitive traditions. But one characteristic 
of the Old Testament narrative stands out in distinct relief— 
and this is true, no matter when, or where, or by whom the 
various books were written—it is the fact of divine revelation. 
It is evident from the very first verse of Genesis that the 
legends of the Babylonians and other tribes kindred to the 
Hebrews have been sifted of their polytheistic elements. One 
of the most eminent and liberal-minded of German theologians 
was guilty of no exaggeration in the remark that the first three 
chapters of Genesis contain more moral and religious truth 
than all other books written independently of the influence of 
the Bible.* 


1See the chapter on “The Gradualness of Revelation” in Fisher’s 
“Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief,” upon which we are drawing 


290 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


2. Progress from Lower to Higher Conceptions of God 
a Proof of Revelation 


Just what precisely was the conception of God which was 
entertained in the earliest periods of Hebrew history is a sub- 
ject concerning which different views are held by different 
Biblical scholars. Traditional theology has taught that in the 
first pair, created perfect, the human race was started with a 
perfect knowledge of the one and only true God, and that 
any loss of that true knowledge of the true God was due to sin, 
to the fall of man and his wandering away from God—that 
idolatry, polytheism, and all other false and degrading con- 
ceptions of God are convincing proofs of the descent of man 
from the first exalted mental and moral estate in which he 
was started at creation. In the estimation of this school of 
theological thought the admission that the Hebrew conception 
of God was developed by slow degrees from lower ideas and 
conceptions is incompatible with what is regarded by them 
as the true doctrine of Biblical inspiration. But many mod- 
ern Bible scholars think that they can trace within the Old 
Testament itself the stages of a distinct growth in the develop- 
ment of the conception of God. “If there be reasons for be- 
lieving that among the early Hebrews Jehovah was regarded 
merely as a tribal Deity, certain it is that this conception by 
degrees grew into that of a supreme Sovereign, righteous in 
his character, with an expanded, even world-wide control. 
This purifying and elevating effect, this monotheistic, ethical 
faith, so in contrast with Semitic history elsewhere, is inex- 
plicable save on the supposition that it is due to the self- 
revelation of God.” 

That the process of expelling the vestiges of polytheism and 
image worship from the practices of the Israelitish people was 
accomplished slowly, says Dr. Fisher, is sufficiently clear. 
“The cult of household images did not at once disappear. 
Scholars of high repute consider the earliest beliefs of the 
descendants of Abraham to have fallen short of a positive 


freely in this chapter. Though written many years ago, it is a book of 
abiding value to students of theism. 


PROGRESSIVE REVELATION OF GOD 291 


monotheism, and to have been rather a monolatry—the wor- 
ship of one God to the exclusion of all other worship, but 
without an explicit disbelief in the existence of other divinities 
who had respectively their own earthly realms to govern.” 
Jephthah says to a Moabite King: “Wilt thou not possess that 
which Chemosh thy God giveth thee to possess? So whom- 
soever the Lord our God hath dispossessed from before us, 
them will we possess.” It would be natural for the half- 
enlightened Hebrews to imagine that there was some sort of 
territorial limit to the jurisdiction of the God whom they 
worshipped. The progress of Hebrew faith would then in- 
clude, first, the idea of the God of Israel as more powerful than 
all other deities; and then, later, the ascription to him of 
almightiness, and the distinct conviction that all other gods are 
fictitious beings. The path from a more narrow conception of 
God to a pure and absolute monotheism involved thus a 
deepening and clarifying ethical idea of the attributes of 
Israel’s God. If Jehovah at the outset was regarded as simply 
the tribal God, the sovereign protector of that one people, 
while the other nations were imagined to have each its own 
guardian divinity, the expansion of this primitive notion into 
the pure and lofty conception of the only true and living God, 
the world’s Creator and Ruler, which is presented in soul- 
stirring language by the most ancient prophets, is a marvel. 
The transformation is really insoluble on any naturalistic 
theory. Even on the supposition that there was this 
gradual uplifting of religion from the low plane on which 
all pagan nations stood, and that the notion of a mere local 
divinity, of limited control, gave way to the conception of one 
Lord of heaven and earth, the Maker of all things, the Ruler 
of nations, the universal Sovereign—even on this supposition, 
no conclusion would be so reasonable as that God Almighty 
took this method of gradually disclosing his being and at- 
tributes to that portion of the human race from whom, as from 
a centre, the light of the true faith was eventually to radiate 
to the rest of mankind.* 


1 See Fisher’s “Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief.” 


292 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


3. Progressive Ethicisation of the Idea of God 


It thus appears that not only was the truth of the unity and 
the universal sovereignty of God a conception of the divine 
Being that was attained slowly and that was only gradually 
and progressively revealed by God to Israel, but no less dis- 
cernible in the Old Testament history is the evidence of a 
progressive and increasing ethicisation of the character of God 
as he is conceived and interpreted by the Hebrew nation. 
In the early periods of Hebrew history things were attributed 
to God which are irreconcilable not only with the character 
of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ but with the 
God of the nation as he is interpreted and revealed by the 
later prophets, by whom he is declared to be a holy and right- 
eous Sovereign who can neither think nor do any wrong 
himself, nor approve of that which is wrong in others. “In 
the introductory periods of revelation,” says Dr. Fisher, “a 
positive and immediate agency in the production of moral evil 
is ascribed to God. Sometimes, for example, the hardening 
of the heart is spoken of as if it were divinely produced, and 
as if it were the end which is directly aimed at. Such passages, 
taken by themselves, would warrant the harshest doctrine of 
reprobation which hyper-Calvinism has ever broached.” Of 
course, such passages must not be “taken by themselves alone,” 
or, if taken thus, they must be understood to represent only 
one stage in a progressive revelation of God, or in a progres- 
sive interpretation of God, that was ever moving forward 
towards the revelation and the interpretation of “the Holy 
One of Israel” as one who could neither think, nor feel, nor 
will, nor do anything that was morally wrong. 

It is only by recognising that the conception of God as 
held by some individual Hebrews differed from that held by 
others,—or that the conception changed and became more 
ethical as time advanced and the race learned in the school of 
experience what God is like—that we can explain such a 
moral difficulty in the Hebrew Scriptures as the discrepancy 
in the two accounts given in the Old Testament of what 
“moved” David to number the people. In 2 Samuel xxiv. 1, 


PROGRESSIVE REVELATION OF GOD 293 


it is said that God moved David against Israel and bade him 
go out and number the people. The later account of the same 
event, found in 1 Chronicles xxi, I, says that it was Satan 
who provoked David to number Israel. In both cases, how- 
ever, it is regarded as a sin involving guilt on the part of 
David, for which he must be punished. The two narratives 
declare that God offered to David a choice of three different 
forms of punishment,—famine, war and pestilence. He 
chooses the last named, and as a consequence seventy thousand 
of the people die in three days’ time. The writer in Second 
Samuel seems to see no moral difficulty whatever in having 
God to instigate a deed which is pronounced a sin; nor does 
either writer seem to see any moral difficulty in having seventy 
thousand innocent people suffer death as a punishment for 
David’s guilt, or any difficulty in making it appear that this 
pestilential holocaust of human beings sufficed to fully satisfy 
and appease “‘the anger of the Lord” against Israel and 
against David. The fact that one narrative says that God 
offered David seven years of famine, while the other says 
it was three years, is but a trifling discrepancy as compared 
with the moral difficulties to which attention is here called. 
But all these discrepancies alike, whether they involve a trifling 
difference as in the matter of numbers, or the more serious 
differences in the interpretation of the moral character of 
God, prove that there is a human element in both the matter 
and the manner of the Biblical revelation which is a possible 
source of error; and that the recognition of this fallible human 
element in the Bible is a help and not a hindrance to faith in 
God. The progressive character of the Hebrew revelation 
of the Divine Being and the moral vindication of His character 
who is the one and only true God and who possesses without 
limitation every possible attribute of personality and perfec- 
tion, are thus seen to be doctrines which support each other, 
and which, taken together, help to explain an otherwise very 
perplexing moral difficulty in the Old Testament. 

The progressive development of the Israelitish nation in 
their social, ethical and religious ideas and ideals and prac- 
tices is closely related to, indeed finds its highest expression in, 


294 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


their interpretation of God. In the farewell message of Moses 
recorded in the thirty-third chapter of Deuteronomy, his 
description of God as “the Lord that came from Sinai and 
rose up from Seir,” is followed by oft-quoted words of rare 
poetic beauty and high spiritual import to which we have 
already made reference: “The eternal God is thy refuge and 
underneath are the everlasting arms.’’ And these words in 
turn are followed immediately by others that indicated in what 
way they looked for the proof of God’s love for and protec- 
tion over them: “and he shall thrust out the enemy from 
before thee, and shall say, Destroy them.” The sequel shows 
in what way they expected this providential purpose of God 
to be realised. "The conquest of Canaan that followed the 
death of Moses involved cruelties in the utter destruction of 
men, women and children, which, according to the Scrip- 
ture narrative, were either ordered by God or approved by 
him, but which it is not easy to reconcile with the character of 
God as he has been revealed to us by Christ, or even by the 
later prophets. The difference is not in God; he was the same 
then that he is now. The difference is in man’s conceptions and 
interpretations of God that prevailed at different times ;—we 
say at different times, though more or less different interpreta- 
tions of God could doubtless have been found existing at one 
and the same time among different individuals in the nation, 
or among different schools of thought. In this case the 
progress in moral ideas and ideals would be explained on the 
principle of the survival of the fittest. The most ethical con- 
ception of God is that most fit to survive in the moral evolu- 
tion that has always been going on.* 


Ill 


PROGRESSIVE REVELATION OF GODIN THE 
NEW TESTAMENT 


Coming now to the New Testament we find that short as 
is the period covered by its records—less than a century— 
1 See George Adam Smith’s strong presentation of the proof of a Divine 


Revelation in the Old Testament, contained in his “Modern Criticism and 
the Preaching of the Old Testament.” 


yt 


PROGRESSIVE REVELATION OF GOD 295 


there takes placing during this time a manifest change and 
marked progress in the conception of God. And great as this 
change was in its bearing on the conception of Jehovah, it 
was even greater in its bearing on God as related to and re- 
vealed in the Messiah and the Holy Spirit. 


1. Progress in the Conception of God from Legalism 
to Loving Fatherhood 


Following the great period in Hebrew history that was dom- 
inated by the great prophets and characterised by lofty ethical 
and spiritual ideas concerning God, there came a night of 
punctilious legalism. The prevalent conception of God in the 
time of Christ was legalistic rather than ethical and spiritual. 
It is mainly from St. Paul and the Pharisees that we learn 
what was the conception of God prevalent among the Jews at 
the beginning of the Christian era. The dominant idea of 
Deity may be described as legal—God was the great law- 
maker and law-enforcer, a divine Taskmaster to be feared 
and obeyed rather than loved. “God was conceived of as the 
Sovereign above the world before whom man appears, not 
with whom man is to live. God was law to the soul; law was 
God to man, Righteousness was fulfilling the law. Religion 
was resolved into the relation of the soul to the law which 
was at once the unalterable declaration of the Divine Will and 
the revelation of God’s glory. This ethical conception of the 
Divine Being as absolute law, as Paul had learned it, was in- 
deed a sublime conception of Deity. Moral Sovereignty, as 
revealed in the glory of unalterable law, was a grand and awful 
conception. In his pre-Christian period Paul’s conscience had 
not learned to walk peacefully with God, the righteous Father ; 
but it stood still and trembled, naked and afraid, before the 
holy God of Israel.” * And Paul’s feelings towards God, 
assuming that they are here rightly described, may be taken 
as typical and representative of the theistic ideas that pre- 
vailed among the better class of Pharisees in his day. Paul 
was the last interpreter of God in the Old Dispensation and 
the first interpreter of the New Dispensation; Saul of Tarsus 


1See Newman Smyth’s “Christian Ethics,” pp. 155-182. 


296 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


represents the former while Paul the Apostle represents the 
latter. 

The gradual transformation of this legal idea of God into 
the conception of him as a holy and all-loving Father was 
the one great achievement of Christ. Christ took the word 
‘Father,’ and so charged it with meaning that it has become 
and must remain the ultimate conception of God—so writes 
Dr. G. A. Johnston Ross.* He found the conception local, 
and universalised it; tribal, and individualised it; physical, and 
moralised it. In this last particular he has rendered a service 
to humanity that is absolutely unique. The quality of the 
fatherhood which he attributed to God, its perfect combina- 
tion of mercy and truth, intimacy and elevation, obligation 
and independence, is his own gift to the world, and is that 
after all which distinguishes Christianity from other religions. 
If any one should ask us wherein is Christianity superior to 
other religions, it is best to reply “In the character of its God.” 
In the entire history of religious thought never before or 
since has so great a change and achievement been accomplished 
in so short a time as that wrought by Christ in replacing the 
traditional and prevalent idea of God with that of the divine 
Fatherhood in whose nature love was revealed as dominant, 
if any one attribute could be dominant over all other attributes. 


2. Progress from an Earthly to a Spiritual Messiah 


But not less marked, indeed in a sense even more marked, 
was the gradual change that took place in their interpreta- 
tion of Christ. The prevalent idea was that the Messiah was 
to be an earthly ruler and establish an earthly kingdom. Their 
thoughts of him were of the earth earthy, and the very idea 
of the divine incarnation had to be first created and then de- 
veloped. They were prepared to see their Messiah work 
miracles. This was a fitting accompaniment of his work in 
the establishment of the messianic kingdom. But that he 
was to be a spiritual and not temporal ruler, and his kingdom 
a spiritual and not a political and earthly kingdom; that he 
was to suffer death like other men, that he was not only the 

1“The God We Trust,” p. 27. 


PROGRESSIVE REVELATION OF GOD 297 


Son of Man and the Messiah but really and truly the Son of 
God, pre-existent as to the past and coequal with the Father in 
heaven, and perhaps hardest of all to believe, that he was the 
Redeemer and Saviour of all men and nations just as truly 
as of themselves—that it was only gradually and progressively 
that their faith came to comprehend all these cardinal facts 
and truths concerning the divine-human Christ, the New 
Testament Scriptures abundantly show. 


3. The Advent of .the Holy Spirit 


The revelation of the personality and deity of the Holy 
Spirit which took place on the day of Pentecost was not only 
an expression of progress in the revelation of God, but it was 
much more—it marked a great epoch, and created a new era in 
man’s expanding and enlarging knowledge of God. What 
the advent and incarnation are to Christ, the day of Pentecost 
is to the Holy Spirit—the day of his self-revelation to the 
world. What the three Synoptic Gospels are to Christ, the 
book of Acts is to the Holy Spirit. Instead of being titled 
“The Acts of the Apostles,” it has been said, and not without 
some good reason, that this book might even more appro- 
priately be titled “The Acts of the Holy Spirit.” What the 
Gospel of John is to the person and deity of the Christ by 
way of an inspired interpretation, that the Apostolic Epistles 
are to the person and deity of the Holy Spirit. In the revela- 
tion of the Holy Spirit, then, which is contained in the book 
of Acts and also in the Epistles we have an advance over the 
earliest New Testament revelation of God. An advance even 
beyond Christ’s most precious revelation in his own divine- 
human person is the revelation of the Third person in the 
Trinity as he is related to the Father and the Son. Christ 
prepared for the coming of the Holy Spirit and committed 
to him the application of the saving benefits of his redeeming 
work and the execution of his purposes in the establishment of 
his spiritual kingdom in the world. The completion, there- 
fore, of the progressive revelation of God in the Scriptures 
is found not in the incarnation of the Son of God in our 
humanity, nor yet in Christ’s revelation of the Fatherhood 


298 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


of God, but in the personality, deity and work of the Holy 
Spirit. The Holy Spirit is pre-eminently the Divine Person 
with whom we have to deal; and for the finite spirit to 
be rightly related to the infinite Spirit—the Spirit of the 
Father and of the Son—is to realise perfectly the ideal of 
the Christian religion. It is, then, not an empty theological 
phrase but a statement of a profound reality when we say that 
we are under the Dispensation of the Holy Spirit. 


4. Progress as Reflected in the Literature of the New 
Testament 


The progressive character of the New Testament revelation 
of God and his purpose of redemption in and through Christ 
has been approached and presented from a somewhat different 
angle by Dr. Thomas Carter, thus: 


“The New Testament Scriptures are the outcome of the 
missionary attitude and activity of early Christianity. They 
were born out of obedience to the last command, the product 
of the union of divine fulness and human need. This is ever 
the genesis of Scripture, the invasion of the human realm of 
sin and self by the ever-expanding energy of the Spirit of the 
living God. Starting with the book of Matthew, which sets 
in the forefront the Jewish genealogy and gives a somewhat 
narrow channel to the current of our Lord’s life, it passes on 
through Mark, the Roman Gospel, and Luke, the Greek Gos- 
pel, to John, the racial. And in the Acts the graphic tale 
is continued. A new beginning is made in Jerusalem, only 
to set in motion a movement that is destined to flow out into 
the surrounding hills of Judea, pervade Palestine with its 
beneficent influence, and finally forge its victorious way to the 
heart of the capital of the empire. The Epistles then take up 
the great missionary conception incarnate in Christ and bring 
its wondrous message to bear on the world of human thought, 
fighting its way through Roman ridicule, Corinthian impurity, 
Galatian fickleness, Colossian narrowness, and Ephesian idol- 
atry until in the majestic roll of apocalyptic vision the city 
of God, dwarfing by its celestial magnificence all the greatness 
and glory of the nations and kings and tribes of earth, like a 
newly arrayed bride comes down out of heaven, having ‘the 


PROGRESSIVE REVELATION OF GOD 299 


glory of God for its light, and the nations of them that are 
saved to walk in it.’ 

“Look at the first verse of the New Testament and contrast 
its scope and outlook with that of the last. That first verse 
reads: ‘The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son 
of David, the son of Abraham.’ That last verse reads: ‘The 
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with all the saints.’ In 
the light of these two statements—one narrow, national, 
earthly, the other as broad as the sea of humanity and as 
heavenly as the grace of God in Christ can make it—who can 
deny that the New Testament, though born of occasions many 
and varied, though fragmentary and frequently local, still is 
permeated by the Spirit of God, illustrative of the mind of 
Christ, and in its constant answering to the ever-growing de- 
mands of the Church proves itself to be the breathing of the 
Holy Ghost?” ? 


5. Ihe Ever-enlarging Conception of God and of the 
Divine-human Christ 


Christ said to the men of his generation that after the 
days of his flesh were ended, they were going to do greater 
things than he was then doing, and he has richly redeemed 
his promise. It was by the aid of the Holy Spirit whom he 
promised to send as a divine guide, paraclete and ever-present 
helper, that these greater works were to be accomplished. If 
Christ had continued longer in the flesh with his disciples— 
say ten, twenty, thirty years—his physical body would have 
become more and more a hindrance and not a help to his high- 
est influence over them and to his most effective work through 
them. It was only after the human Christ became to their 
faith the ethical and spiritual and purely divine Christ, and 
all bodily associations and limitations were removed, that their 
ethical and spiritual efficiency became greatest. Christ, there- 
fore, ought to be, and is, to us a greater and diviner Christ 
than the early disciples knew, or could know, because we have 
seen his marvellous doings in and through Spirit-filled men 
for the more than eighteen centuries that have elapsed since 
they lived and died. Surely we ought to reinterpret Christ 


1“The Story of the New Testament.” 


300 — THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


in our day and build him bigger mansions in our minds and 
hearts, because we can see more of God in him and in his work 
than they could see who lived with him in the days of the 
flesh. That the Christ of the twentieth century has been proven 
by his nineteen centuries of achievement in the world to be a 
greater and diviner Christ than the early disciples knew is 
witnessed by every page of every history of the Christian 
Church and of Christian civilisation that has been written in 
the last hundred years, if it is faithful to the facts of history. 

The purpose of all reinterpretations of Christ by those who 
have caught the vision of his greatness is to awaken their 
fellow men to a fresh and equally profound conviction that 
he is the very revelation of the love and power of God for 
the salvation of the world. As Christ was the incarnation of 
God so are men, his followers, to incarnate him. And as the 
incarnate Christ, though revealing God in the words he spoke 
concerning him as no words of prophet ever spoken before 
had revealed him, yet revealed and interpreted him more per- 
fectly in his own life and character, so is it true of his followers 
that their truest and most effective interpretation and reproduc- 
tion of the Christ is not in spoken words, but in living the 
Christian life and in exhibiting the Christian character. Men 
may doubt and deny the God of your creed, but your life 
and your deeds are arguments that cannot be doubted or denied. 

It is now more than a third of a century ago that a distin- 
guished English theologian declared that the most distinctive 
and determinative element in modern theology is what we may 
term a new feeling for Christ. That “feeling for Christ” is 
just as strong to-day as it was when these words were uttered. 
Indeed the “feeling for Christ’’ is the one thing that is “new” 
in every age—it is always new. And this is because Jesus 
has left little if anything really new to be said concerning God 
or concerning any of the great truths of religion, which means 
our duties towards God, or of ethics, which means our duties 
towards our fellow men. What Christ said is so fraught 
with meaning, is so abidingly virile and so charged with 
dynamic moral force that it remains eternally new. A modern 
philosopher once declared that the ancients had stolen all his 


PROGRESSIVE REVELATION OF GOD 301 


original ideas. The extent to which Christ has anticipated all 
the best and greatest thoughts of the theologians and moral 
philosophers and sociologists that have spoken or written since 
he lived proves at once the limitations of the human mind and 
the marvellousness of the mind of the great Teacher. 


6. The Finality of the Revelation of Jesus Not Inconsistent 
with Continued Progress 


It thus appears that even in the short period covered by the 
literature of the New Testament there is traceable a marked 
progress in the interpretation of God as he is revealed in the 
person of Jesus Christ. When we think of the meager con- 
ception of Christ entertained by the twelve apostles at the time 
they were first called to be disciples and companions of our 
Lord, of how slowly and yet how surely that conception ex- 
panded as they listened to his words, witnessed his works, 
watched his life from day to day, and his spirit “‘with less of 
earth in it than heaven’”—thought about him, talked first with 
him and then about him, reflected, interpreted, revised their 
opinions ever and anon, went backward at times as well as 
forward, confessed at Czsarea Philippi that he was “The Son 
of the living God,” then forsook him and fled at the time of 
trial, then came back into faith, and then, stunned by his 
death, lost heart and gave up—then, restored, reheartened, and 
reinforced by his resurrection from the dead, they came thus 
at length to interpret him in terms of Deity, and going forth 
in that faith undaunted, to live and die, they laid the founda- 
tions of the mightiest empire that has ever been established 
on the earth. And yet we have gone far beyond even these 
apostles in our conception of the greatness of God and the 
divineness of Christ, and why should we not?—for we inter- 
pret Christ and the Father whom he revealed in the light of 
all that bears witness to God’s presence and power in the earth 
in nineteen centuries of human history, a history which, how- 
ever, marred by the sins of men and nations, has never failed 
to reveal God as the Father and Christ as the Saviour of men. 
And not only is the conception of God, and of the divine- 
human Christ, higher, greater, and that means truer, than 


302 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


ever before,—but there are more people than ever before who 
believe in the one and only true God and in his Son Jesus 
Christ. 

But while men may and should come to interpret the Heav- 
enly Father and the divine-human Christ in terms of a higher 
and larger faith growing out of a progressive and ever-enlarg- 
ing experience, the revelation which Christ has given the world 
of God will never be surpassed, and this because, from our 
point of view, it cannot be surpassed. It is, therefore, final, 
and final because it carries the principle of endless progress 
within it. “The finality of Jesus is to be found,” says Dr. John 
A. Rice, “in the ultimate things among which he lived and 
moved and had his Being; in the viewpoint, attitude, and 
spirit which were his, and the power with which he lived 
out spiritual realities. For he is indeed the contemporary of 
all ages, the citizen of all climes, the ideal of all races, the 
inspiration of all classes, the brother of all men. His God must 
be to us final because we cannot conceive one higher than 
our Father in heaven. His conception of man as the child 
of God, heir to all the riches of the Father, must be held 
supreme since we can conceive none beyond; his ethics, the 
science of brotherly love, and his type of society, a universal 
brotherhood in which each lives in fellowship with the Father 
and in fraternal service to others, must be accepted as the 
goal of all our yearnings and social efforts until a better can 
be found. His method of redemption by love alone is rapidly 
coming to the fore as our only hope for the lost. His method 
of worship—a free spirit worshipping the Father in spirit 
and truth—cannot be surpassed, nor can we get beyond his 
outlook upon the future life: the righteous risen to eternal 
fellowship in the kingdom of the undefiled, the unrighteous 
left out. He is the divine-human goal upon whom all the 
lines of progress of the Old Testament converge, in whom 
alone all the great ideas of the Old Testament—in themselves 
incomplete—find fulfilment. . Nowhere else do we reach such 
a satisfying sense of finality as in Jesus. Above Him we can 
see nothing.” * 


1“The Old Testament in the Life of To-day.” 


PROGRESSIVE REVELATION OF GOD 303 


To show the difference between a progressive and a non- 
progressive religion Dr. Harry Fosdick * compares and con- 
trasts Mohammedanism and the religion of the Bible in some 
of their aspects as follows: 


“In the Bible one can find all the ideas and customs which 
Mohammedanism has approved and for which it now is hated: 
its oriental deity decreeing fates, its use of force to destroy 
unbelievers, its patriarchal polygamy, and its slave systems. 
All these things, from which we now send missionaries to 
convert Mohammedans, are in our Bible, but in the Bible they 
are not final. They are ever being superseded. The revelation 
is progressive. The idea of God grows from oriental kingship 
to compassionate fatherhood; the use of force gives way to 
the: appeals of love; polygamy is displaced by monogamy; 
slavery never openly condemned, even when the New Testa- 
ment closes, is being undermined by ideas which, like dynamite, 
in the end will blast to pieces its foundations. We are contin- 
ually running upon passages like this: ‘It was said to them 


of old time, . . . but I say unto you;’ “God, having of old 


time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions 
and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken 
unto us in his Son.’ ‘The times of ignorance therefore God 
overlooked ; but now he commandeth men that they should all 
everywhere repent;’ and over the doorway out of the New 
Testament into the Christian centuries that followed is written 
this inscription: “The spirit of truth ... shall guide you 
into all the truth.’ In a word, finality in the Koran is behind 
—it lies in the treasured concepts of 600 A.D.—but finality 
in the Bible is ahead. We are moving toward it. It is too 
great for us yet to apprehend. Our best thoughts are thrown 
out in its direction but they do not exhaust its meaning. 


‘Our little systems have their day; 
They have their day and cease to be; 
They are but broken lights of thee, 
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.’ 


“Such is the exultant outlook of a Christian believer on a 
progressive world.” 


1 “Christianity and Progress,” pp. 214-15. 


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CHAPTER TWELVE 


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CuHaPprer TWELVE 
THE DIVINE INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES 


To say that the Bible is the most widely read book in the 
literature of the world, is to state a most commonplace and 
well-known fact. It is the only book that has been translated, 
even in part, into all the languages of mankind. The primary 
motive in making an alphabet and written forms for some of 
these languages was to print the Bible and impart to men a 
knowledge of its contents. 

And yet the Bible has always been under fire of the un- 
believing world, and doubtless always will be. It is not to be 
regretted that it is so. Criticism causes it to be more diligently 
read and more correctly interpreted by those who devoutly 
believe in its divine inspiration and authority. But the critical 
study of the Bible during the past half century has had this 
notable characteristic—namely, it has been conducted not so 
much by unbelievers and sceptics as by its friends, those who 
reverence it and believe in its inspiration, and in its divine 
authority in moral and spiritual matters. This means that 
Biblical criticism is, or is at least intended to be, constructive 
and not destructive of faith in the Bible as the Word of God. 


I 
WHAT IS BIBLICAL INSPIRATION? 


_ There is no feature of present-day religious thought and 

discussion that has attracted such widespread attention and so 

sharply divided modern Bible students and theologians into 

opposing schools of thought as the subject of Biblical inspira- 

tion. The application to the Bible of the principles of literary 

and historical criticism that are applied to all other types of 
307 


oO 


308 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


ancient literature, to determine when they were written, who 
wrote them, and to what extent they are accurate and trust- 
worthy statements of fact, has resulted in what is called the 
higher criticism of the Bible. What is called lower criticism 
consists of a determination of the original Hebrew and Greek 
text found in the ancient manuscripts that furnish the basis 
and source of our modern versions of the Bible. The higher 
criticism of the Bible has brought to light the fact that two very 
different conceptions of inspiration prevail in the Church; and 
it is important that we give as clear a statement as possible to 
both views—the one being the long prevalent doctrine of tradi- 
tional theology, and the other the view held by an ever-increas- 
ing number of modern Biblical scholars. 


1. The Traditional Doctrine of Biblical Inspiration 


The long prevalent traditional doctrine of Biblical inspira- 
tion has been stated by various theologians of the Church in 
such terms as the following: 

“Every book of the Bible, every chapter of it, every verse 
of it, every word of it, every syllable of it, every letter of it, 
is the direct utterance of the Most High, supreme, absolute, 
faultless, unerring.”’ “Every syllable of it is just what it 
would be had God spoken from heaven without the interven- 
tion of any human agent.’”’ “God presided over the sacred 
writers in their entire work of writing, with the design and 
effect of making that writing an errorless record.” ‘A proved 
error in Scripture contradicts not only our doctrine, but the 
Bible claims, and therefore its inspiration in making those 
claims.” “Chronological and geographical details, as well as 
matters of physical science mentioned in the Bible, must in 
every portion of every book be held to have been stated with 
infallible accuracy. This infallibility and authority attach as 
well to the verbal expression in which the revelation is con- 
veyed, as to the revelation itself.” ‘Scripture is infallible truth, 
free from all error; each and everything contained in it is 
absolute truth, be it doctrine, morals, history, chronology, 
topography, proper names.” These quotations represent the 
views of such writers as Dean Burgon, Gaussen, Turrentin, 


INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE 309 


Hodge, Lee, and others,* who have written in defence of the 
traditional Church doctrine. They call their doctrine that of 
“plenary inspiration,’ but it is usually designated, by those 
who oppose it, as the “verbal” or “mechanical theory” of in- 
spiration. 

Dr. Shedd, a strong advocate for plenary inspiration, says 
in words which we here condense: “The fact that the Bible 
contains a human element furnishes one of the principal argu- 
ments urged by those who assert the fallibility of Scripture. 
This objection overlooks the fact that the human element in 
the Bible is so modified by the divine element with which 
it is blended as to differ from the merely ordinary human. 
The written Word is indeed divine-human, like the incarnate 
Word. But the human element in Scripture, like the human 
nature in our Lord, is preserved from the defects of the com- 
mon human and becomes the pure and ideal human. The 
human mind alone and by itself is fallible, but when inspired 
and moved by the Holy Spirit it becomes infallible, because 
it is no longer alone and by itself. When the Holy Spirit 
inspires a human mind, though this human mind is not freed 
from sin, yet it is freed from all error on the points involved. 
It is no longer the fallibly human, but is infallible upon all 
subjects respecting which it is inspired to teach. The history 
which it relates, the physics which it sets forth, the chronology 
which it presents, are all alike free from error. When the 
Holy Spirit selects a particular person—Moses, Samuel, David, 
Isaiah, John, Paul—as his organ for communicating religious 
truth to mankind, he first makes him infallible, though he 
does not make him sinless. Consequently the human element 
in the prophecy or the history or the dogma which this inspired 
person gives to the Church is not a fallible element, because 
it is blended with the divine element of inspiration and kept 
free from human error.” 

I do not know of any clearer or stronger statement of the 


1Dr. R. A, Torrey, a popular modern evangelist, defends this doctrine 
of inspiration: “Remember that the Bible is verbally inspired; that 1s, 
that the Holy Spirit, the unerring Spirit of God, led the Bible writers 
in the choice of every word they wrote that exactly expressed what was 
in the mind of God.” (“Importance and Value of Bible Study,” p. 70.) 


310 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


traditional doctrine of Biblical inspiration than this given by 
Dr. Shedd in his “Dogmatic Theology.” 


2. The Modern Scholar’s View of Biblical Inspiration 


There is an increasing number of Bible students and writers 
throughout the Christian world who believe this to be an in- 
defensible view of inspiration, in that it claims more than 
the Bible claims for itself, and is calculated to result in pro- 
ducing more doubts than it removes as to the inspiration and 
authority of the Bible. According to this view the discovery 
of occasional errors in the Bible—for example, of chronology, 
geography, history, and the like—which may be traced to the 
distinctly human element in the Bible is a thing rather to be 
expected than otherwise, and it is unwise to make the inspira- 
tion and authority of the Scriptures, as a revelation of God’s 
will in matters of moral and spiritual truth, to stand or fall 
with the claims of absolute inerrancy that are made in their 
behalf by the advocates of the former view. 

In the New Testament there are to be found two hundred 
and seventy-five quotations from the Old Testament, of which 
number only sixty-three agree exactly with the Hebrew Old 
Testament. In thirty-seven of these quotations the New Testa- 
ment follows the Septuagint which is different in varying de- 
grees from the Hebrew. In seventy-six instances there are 
slight variations from the Hebrew, and in ninety-nine cases 
the quotations vary more or less from both the Hebrew and 
the Septuagint. While the facts to which attention is here 
called do not in any way affect the substantial trustworthiness 
of either the Old or the New Testament records, it will be seen 
at once that they have a serious bearing on the doctrine of 
plenary inspiration so far as it claims absolute inerrancy for 
the Bible, even to the very words used. 

The author of “Present-Day Theology’ may be selected to 
speak for the modern scholar’s view—and he is not a radical 
critic, but one who speaks with moderation, as the following | 
words will show :— | 


“Some theologians begin with the a priori principle that the 


INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE Sil 


Bible must be absolutely inerrant, and boldly assert that this 
is the case, not only in matters which pertain to the one great 
purpose of revelation, but in all matters whatsoever. Now we 
can easily conceive that it might have been so. But we have 
no right to assume that it is so until we have examined the 
facts. If the facts show that this was not the case, which, 
let us ask, honours God the most, te accept his method of 
making a Bible as the best, or insist that he followed the 
method which we think best? It seems a very good and pious 
thing to insist that the Bible is absolutely without error; but 
nothing is good or pious which is contrary to facts, and nothing 
has done more harm to the cause of Christianity than the well- 
meaning but mistaken defences which have been employed. 
Now a careful examination of the facts shows that inspiration 
did not render the sacred writers infallible in everything, how- 
ever infallible they may have been in that for which they 
were inspired. Let us look at the subject in detail, so far as 
our time will permit. . . .* Such are some of the facts. The 
sphere in which they lie is not that of divine revelation. They 
belong to the circumference, not to the centre. Judged by 
every true criterion, they are unimportant. They do not con- 
tradict inspiration; rather, they are limitations incidental to 
inspiration. For my part, I do not regard them as difficulties 
in the way of the Bible, but rather as recommendations to its 
acceptance. I can see how the Bible can much better accom- 
plish its purpose by not offering us infallibility in nonessentials, 
how thus God has made it a more human and intelligible book, 
and has guarded us against that worship of the letter which 
blinds men to the spirit.” 


3. The Two Doctrines as Related to God 


It is the bearing of these two theories or doctrines on the 
conception and character of the God of the Bible that we 
are especially concerned in. The traditional doctrine of in- 
spiration holds, as we have seen, that the Bible is so truly and 
essentially the very and altogether accurate word of God that 
whatever it represents God as saying, or doing, or ordering 

1 The author here cites numerous passages of Scripture that are irrecon- 


‘cilable with the claim of verbal inspiration and Biblical inerrancy. See 
“Present Day Theology” (pp. 105-108) by L. F. Stearns. 


312 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


done, must be accepted as so true that the character of God 
must be made to conform to the Biblical statements. The 
modern scholar’s view is that the absolutely perfect character 
of God as Christ has revealed him to us is the one settled 
and fixed fact in our faith; and if there is found any passage 
of Scripture in the Old or the New Testament that represents 
God as saying, or doing, or ordering done, anything that does 
not accord with the character Christ gives him, then that par- 
ticular Scripture must be considered either as an erroneous 
statement, or as a true statement of a misinterpretation of God 
on the part either of the writer, or of those for whom he 
speaks, Traditional Theology contends for the absolute accu-_ 
racy of the Bible, no matter what it says, regarding it as the 
infallible word of God. The modern scholar’s view leads him 
to contend first of all and above all for the absolute perfec- 
tion of the character and doings of God, and says that if in 
the Bible, anything is attributed to God which we are bound 
to think is inconsistent with his character as it has been re- 
vealed in and by Christ, it 1s to be regarded as an error or 
a misinterpretation of him. It is important that we under- 
stand that the modern Bible scholar is not for a moment trying 
to destroy confidence in the Bible, but he is insisting that we 
must have confidence in the absolute perfection of God, and 
that whatever doctrine of Biblical inspiration best accords 
with that fundamental fact of faith, must be the true doctrine. 
That some things are attributed to God in the Old Testament 
which it is difficult to reconcile with his absolute moral per- 
fection has been a source of religious perplexity to well-nigh 
every thoughtful Bible reader. The modern scholar’s view 
of the Bible as a divine-human book, in making it possible 
to explain certain moral difficulties as misinterpretations of | 
God, has brought relief to many Bible students who, as be-— 
tween an absolutely perfect God and a fallible Bible, on the 
one hand, and an infallible Bible attributing moral imperfection 
to God, on the other hand, cannot hesitate for a moment as to 
which of the two alternatives to choose. Of all doctrines of 


religion the most fundamental is the absolute moral perfection 
of God. 


INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE 313 


These then are the two conceptions of Biblical inspiration 
between which all Bible readers must choose. The traditional 
theological definition of inspiration makes it to be such a divine 
influence of the Holy Spirit upon the Biblical writers as secured 
them against the possibility of a mistake of any kind what- 
soever—in matters of history, chronology, science, and the 
like, no less than in matters purely moral and spiritual. Under 
this view, any mistake whatsoever that could be pointed out 
in the historical or chronological or scientific statements made 
in the Bible would be a serious and even vital matter. The 
tendency of modern theological thought is to regard the dis- 
tinctly moral and spiritual elements in the Bible as those which 
it was the chief end of divine revelation to supply, and which 
it was the main purpose of inspiration to protect from hurtful 
error. The Bible contains a human as well as a divine element, 
and everything human is liable to err. The fact that it is 
inspired, instead of securing for it immunity from being sub- 
jected to the tests of literary and historical criticism such as 
are applied to other documents, should rather make us feel 
that it is all the more important that it should be tested. 


4. The Bible a Divine-Human Book 


There is a divine-human Person, a divine-human Book, and 
a divine-human Institution. In the person of Christ, the divine 
and human, God and man, were perfectly united, without mix- 
ture or confusion. The human nature of Jesus was as “‘very 
man’ as if it had sustained no vital union with the eternal 
Logos; and as peccability was an essential element of man’s 
nature as a free moral agent, we think it follows inevitably 
that the human Jesus could have erred. But, in the exercise 
of his freedom, he did not err, and herein is the glory of 
his triumph over temptation and his example to us, not that it 
was impossible for him to sin, but that he could sin, but did not. 

In regard to the divine-human Institution, the collective 
body of believers, that we call the Church, how is it? Of the 
Church we must say that, while it is possible for it not to err, 
yet, as a matter of fact, it has erred and does err (at least such 
is the Protestant doctrine, though the papal doctrine is that 


314 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


the Church is infallible and cannot err—meaning by the 
Church, of course, themselves and themselves only). The 
Holy Spirit, though incarnate within the Church, and though 
working in it and through it, does not prevent the human 
element in the Church from error; and the papal doctrine of 
the infallibility of the Church is not only contradicted by the 
facts of history, but brings the Church under criticism and 
into a disrepute which is aggravated and made ridiculcus by 
these high and unwarranted claims of infallibility—claims that 
are nowhere made for the Church by Christ or the apostles, 
though they call it the pillar and ground of the truth, Yet 
in spite of the fact that the Church is liable to err, and has 
erred, and does err, the Holy Spirit works through it and 
makes it the accredited interpreter to mankind of truth per- 
taining to salvation. Not only does God work through a 
fallible Church, but, as the Church is made up of individuals, 
he works through fallible and imperfect men and women. If 
God had deigned to work only in and through human beings 
that are perfect and free from error, he would never have 
done any work in the world except through the man Christ 
Jesus. As to the divine-human Person, then, we say that he 
could err but did not err, and as to the divine-human Institu- 
tion we say it could err and has erred. 

How now about the divine-human Book that comes, as it 
were, between the Christ and the Church? (Can the Bible and 
its inspired writers be in error, or did the divine element so 
dominate and override the human in its production as to render 
the latter incapable of error, as Dr. Shedd claims? Have the 
inspired writers erred, and does the Bible contain mistakes? 
“Well, if the Bible does contain mistakes,’ the modern scholar 
says, “I am not therefore going to say that its writers could 
not be divinely inspired, and that it cannot be an authoritative 
and divinely revealed expression of the will of God. For I 
am sure that, if it does contain mistakes, these mistakes rep- 
resent and emanate from the human and not the divine elements 
in the Bible, and are wholly attributable to fallible men and 
not to the infallible Spirit. I am now prepared to read my 
Bible without any embarrassment when I have reached this 


INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE 315 


mental position—a position attended with much less embarrass- 
ment than I should be in if I felt that the discovery of any 
errors would prove that the writers could not be inspired and 
the Bible could not be God’s book. And if perchance I find, 
as I think I shall, that the Bible contains few if any errors 
that affect in the least its trustworthiness as an expression 
of divine truth concerning the redeeming will of God, I shall 
be all the more pleased with the result reached. Whether the 
Bible, then, contains any mistakes or not, is simply a question 
of fact to be decided through examination by competent judges 
just as all matters pertaining to historical and literary criticism 
are decided.” 


II 
PROOFS OF INSPIRATION 


Instead of saying that the Bible is inspired, and therefore, 
because of that fact, it cannot have any mistakes of any kind 
in it, let us rather be prepared to say: the Bible has been 
thoroughly tested as to its truth, and is being continually 
tested, and this testing has proved that it contains such revela- 
tions of moral and spiritual truth as are found in no other 
book, and such a lofty conception of God as is found in no 
other religion—and for this reason we claim that it furnishes 
the most effective proof possible that it is a divinely inspired 
volume. Certain it is that it is only in that respect in which the 
Bible can, under any and all criticism, be proved to be a true 
and trustworthy book, that it can claim to be divinely inspired. 
As to whether or not inspiration secured the Biblical writers 
from the possibility of mistakes in every sphere into which they 
incidentally entered (e.g., history, chronology, science, etc.), 
there is difference of opinion among theologians; but their 
trustworthiness as revealers of God’s will in all questions of 
an ethical and spiritual nature, when their writings are prop- 
erly interpreted, is a matter upon which all schools of theologi- 
cal Christian thought may be said to be agreed; and this is 
what needs most to be emphasised in our day. 


316 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


1. Do the Scriptures Claim to be Inspired? 


“All Scripture,” says St. Paul, “is given by inspiration of 
God.” By “inspiration” we mean that attribute of the Scrip- 
tures by virtue of which they possess a religious and moral 
value that attaches to no other volume, and in consequence. of 
which they have an authority in the realm of moral and re- 
ligious truth that belongs to no other book. How did the 
Bible get this unique value and authority? That it claims to 
be the Word of God in a sense true of no other book only 
in part explains it. Christ and the apostles regarded the Old 
Testament as the Word of the Lord, and the Christian Church 
has from the beginning appealed to the New Testament as a 
divinely inspired rule of faith and practice. ‘The word of the 
Lord came unto me, saying’’—is an expression of frequent 
occurrence in the messages of the Old Testament prophets, 
and occasionally there is a divine command to write down in a 
book the thing revealed or commanded. The New Testament, 
and also the later Old Testament Scriptures, bear witness to 
the reverence and care with which the Church received, pre- 
served, and transmitted the written records handed down from 
the past, and this because they were believed to be divinely 
inspired. And the antecedent expectation that a divinely in- 
spired book will give us all needful knowledge about God is 
one that will not bring disappointment to the devout reader, 
who is seeking guidance and help in finding God. 


2. The Method of Inspiration and Revelation 


We can believe that, in varying degrees, patriarchs, prophets 
and apostles were divinely inspired, and that God made revela- 
tions to them—and this we can believe without understanding 
exactly how he did so, whether visibly and audibly, or inaudibly 
and inwardly. It suffices for us to see and know by the result 
of the revelation that it is altogether worthy to justify the 
claim being made for it that it is of divine origination. 

“Tt was no audible voice, it was no printed page,” says 
Dr. P. T. Forsythe, “that came to Abraham as the voice of 
the Lord. It was an inward inspiration; and he very nearly 


INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE 317 


committed an awful crime by his inability at first to distinguish 
the false in his impulse from the true. It was an inward and 
poetic vision that passed before the spirit of Isaiah as he saw 
the city of the Lord exalted on Zion, and the nations flocking 
thither with their homage. But only part of that vision was 
true. The precise form of its imagery, which I do not doubt 
the prophet himself believed would be realised, never has been 
and never will be actual. The vision of Paul, again, at Damas- 
cus, to many minds was not an outward and ocular vision 
at all. No man could see it but himself. It was subjective. 
It was to his own eye that the form of the Crucified appeared. 
It was in his ear alone, as in Abraham’s case, that the strange 
words rang. But I have just as little doubt that the vision 
was real, that it was not a mere projection, and not a mere 
hallucination rising from a morbid, nervous condition or a 
sunstroke. If these things played any part, they were but con- 
comitants. I think the revelation was real, and that Christ 
did speak to Paul, with all, and more than all, the reality and 
force he would have had if he had stood forth in the sight 
of the Apostle’s companions, and made His words audible to 
them as well. This was a case, not of imagination, but of 
revelation. It was something more than a mere projection 
from the Apostle’s interior. It was inward, but it was objec- 
tive none the less. And it was not imaginative, it was spiritual 
reality of the kind that changes life and history.” ? 


3. The Practical Proof of Inspiration 


The practical proof of the inspiration of Holy Scriptures— 
as Dr. G. P. Fisher has so clearly shown in his “Grounds of 
Theistic and Christian Belief’’—is found in the life-giving 
power that abides in it and remains undiminished from age to 
age in all the mutations of literature and amid the diverse types 
and advancing stages of culture and civilisation. While the 

Bible is at once the fountain of spiritual light and life, the 
prime source of religious knowledge, and the rule of faith 
and guide of conduct among Christians, it is important to 
remember that the Scriptures are the product of the Church. 


1 “Christ on Parnassus.” 


318 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


They do not create the community of believers; but the com- 
munity of believers, on the other hand, creates them. As the 
Gospels were for the Church, so they were from the Church. 
The Old Testament Church, or community of believers, existed 
not only for centuries but for millenniums before there was 
any collection of written Scripture documents, and the Old 
Testament dispensation had well-nigh closed before it had its 
completed Scriptures as they now exist. And several genera- 
tions of Christian believers had come and gone, and the Chris- 
tian Church was far on its winning and widening way before it 
had discovered, accepted and collected the Apostolic writings 
now known as the New Testament. 

The fundamental reality, therefore, is not the Bible, it is 
the Kingdom of God—it is the society of believers in God. 
This truth cannot be too greatly emphasised. Literary ques- 
tions having to do with the authorship of books—as, for ex- 
ample, whether a book be simple or composite, and whether 
traditional impressions as to authorship are well founded; 
questions having to do also with the correctness of the text 
which has been transmitted to us; questions as to the order 
of succession in the stages of development through which 
the community of God has passed; questions as to the faultless 
accuracy of details in historical narratives—these are no longer 
felt to be of vital moment. They are not points on which the 
Christian religion stands or falls; and the timidity which 
springs out of the idea of Christianity as exclusively a book 
religion, every line in whose sacred books is clothed with the 
preternatural sanctity ascribed by Mohammedan devotees to 
their sacred writings, is dissipated. The Christian believer, 
as long as fundamental verities and the foundations on which 
they stand are unassailed, is no longer disturbed by the un- 
veiling of the human factor in the origination of the Scrip- 
tures, and by finding that it played a more extensive part 
than was once supposed. The treasure is not lost because it is 
distinctly perceived to be held in earthen vessels.* 

There are two ways, says Professor James Denney, in which 


1See Fisher’s “Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief,” pp. 322-336, 
for the fuller development of this “practical” proof of Biblical inspiration. 


INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE 319 


the Bible can be read. It can be read with an historical or 
with a spiritual interest. In the former case we read history, 
in the latter case we make history; in the former case we seck 
to know what others have thought of God, in the latter what 
we are to think of God. Professor Denney says :— 


“The historian is concerned with the differences in the Bible. 
Even when he is aware of a unity which overrules them his 
attention is concentrated on the sundry times and divers man- 
ners in which this unity is revealed. When he admits that 
God has spoken, his aim is to distinguish as clearly as possible 
the many parts and many ways in which he has done so; his 
interest is set not on what God is saying but on what, in cir- 
cumstances which can never be exactly repeated, God said long 
ago... 

“This, however, is not the point of view of the ordinary 
Bible reader, nor is it that of the Church. Their interest in 
the Bible is spiritual and is, therefore, concerned with its unity, 
not with the distinctions in it; they hearken not because of 
what God said to the fathers but because of what he is saying 
to themselves. They do not aim at reaching this through any 
intellectual process exercised upon the results attained by his- 
torical study; they count on enjoying it with an immediacy 
like that of the senses. They open their Bibles and expect 
to see the Light of God as directly as they see the sunshine 
when they open their eyes in the morning; and they are con- 
fident too that they do see it.” 


4. The Internal Evidence of Inspiration 


While it is true that miracles and prophecies, what the older 
theologians called ‘external evidences,” have lost much of their 
evidential value in presenting the divine claims of the Bible 
and Christianity to unbelievers of this generation, what are 
called the “internal evidences” or the moral arguments are 
more relied upon and more emphasised than ever before. This 
latter argument emphasises the fact that the Bible is that book 
which presents the noblest conception of religious truth any- 
where found in literature. Its doctrine, for example, of the 
unity and spirituality of God, its exaltation of the attributes 
of holiness and love, its conception of the personality and 


320 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


fatherhood of God; its presentation of God as an ethical Being 
who loves righteousness in those who worship him and exalts 
it far above mere ritual and ceremonial worship—such a doc- 
trine of God, it is claimed, is self-evidencing, and the book that 
brings to man such a conception of the divine Being does not 
need miracles, it is said, in order to command the respect, the 
reverence, and the faith of men. The same is true of the 
ethical system which everywhere characterises the Bible, espe- 
cially the New Testament; the emphasis that is everywhere 
placed upon righteousness and purity, upon justice and love; 
its condemnation of sin and wrong of every kind and in every 
person. The sermon on the mount, the twelfth chapter of 
Romans, the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians—these and 
other presentations of the ethics of the Bible, again, are “self- 
evidencing” ; they need no miracles to prove that they are from 
God and are an expression of his nature and his will) 

Man’s duties to God, to his fellow man, and to himself have 
found such harmonious expression in the Bible as to create the 
presumption that God must have inspired it. The ethics of 
the Old Testament was the purest the world had ever seen, 
but not until the coming of Christ was it possible to have a 
perfect system of ethics. He was at once the perfect teacher 
of ethics and a perfect example of ethics in his daily life. 
Christian ethics points to Christ as its perfect model. There 
is no vice which the ethics of the Bible does not condemn, and 
no virtue which it does not command and enjoin. “Thou shalt 
love thy neighbour as thyself.” ‘Love is the fulfilling of the 
law.” “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, 
do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” 
“Overcome evil with good.’”’ What being less than God could 
thus see that all human duties may be resolved into love, and 
that perfect love secures perfect obedience to every law? The 
power that can alone secure the perfect discharge of every 
moral duty must be planted within. External laws can never 
secure this result, no matter how minutely expressed and rig- 
idly enforced. If the Bible had no other proof of a divine ele- 
ment within it, appeal could be confidently made to the ethical 
system which is embodied within its teachings, as fully estab- 


INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE 321 


lishing the fact of its containing a revelation of the divine 
Mind. 

Few sentences have ever been written concerning the Bible 
that express a more rational ground of faith in it or a better 
proof of its divine inspiration than the often-quoted words of 
Coleridge: “In the Bible there is more that finds me than I 
have experienced in all other books put together ; the words of 
the Bible find me at greater depths of my being; and whatever 
finds me brings with it an irresistible evidence of its having 
proceeded from the Holy Spirit.” And no less wise and worthy 
to be quoted are the following words of the eminent scholar 
and theologian of Scotiand, Thomas Erskine: “The value of 
the Bible, according to my reason and conscience, consists in 
what it contains—in the truth which I find in it—not in the 
manner in which it was composed. . . . It seems to me most 
important to understand the place which the Scriptures really 
occupy, that so we may make the use of them which they 
were intended to serve and be delivered from any superstitious 
feeling about them. This is specially needed here in Scotland, 
where a belief in the Bible is often substituted for faith in 
God, and a man is considered religious, not because he walks 
with God in his spirit, but because he acknowledges and main- 
tains the verbal inspiration of the sacred canon. I have seen 
people brought up in this way who would have felt their whole 
faith in spiritual things annihilated by the discovery of any 
contradiction or inaccuracy in the Gospel history. A faith of 
this kind which rests on ignorance and is dispelled by knowl- 
edge, is certainly not the kind of faith which we should desire 
either for ourselves or for others. . . . But while I believe 
that ninety-nine out of a hundred of the religious people of 
Scotland believe the verbal inspiration of the Bible, and would 
have their faith shaken to pieces by such facts as your friend 
has here adduced,—and while I should like to see them dis- 
abused—nevertheless I should like for this to be done in a way 
that would transfer their faith from the letter to the spirit, 
and not destroy their faith altogether. . . . The character of 
God as a teaching Father who eternally desires and seeks the 
holiness of his reasonable creatures seems to me to be the great 


322 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


revelation of the Bible and the true meaning of Christianity. 
. . . This is the pearl of great price which when a man has 
found he needs not that any should tell him its value, for 
he knows it and feels it; he does not need any evidence, any 
other evidence, that this revelation of God is the true revela- 
tion.” 

It is thus the moral and spiritual qualities of the Bible that 
are accounted by the apologists of this day and generation as 
of more value than many miracles, and hence these are the 
attributes of the Bible most prized and most emphasised in our 
day by readers and students who find it a pathway to God. 
There are many who are ready to take their stand with Cole- 
ridge and say: Let those who can and may find comfort and 
strength for their faith in the physical miracles and predictive 
prophecies of the Scriptures; but, as for me, it is because the 
Bible finds me, finds me at deeper depths and meets my 
highest moral and spiritual needs as does no other book, that I 
believe it to be divinely inspired. 


5. Some Witnesses to the Word 


There could perhaps be no stronger argument adduced in 
proof of the divine inspiration of the sacred Scriptures than 
to collect and arrange in proper form the answers that would 
be given by Bible readers to a question propounded to all that 
should read like this:—Why do you believe the Bible to be 
the Word of God? The answers given would reflect to a large 
extent the theological point of view entertained by the indi- 
vidual answering the question. But while the reasons given 
would be very different, each one would doubtless assign a 
valid reason for his faith in the Bible as the Word of God, 
while all of them taken together could not fail to constitute a 
strong argument in proof of what might reasonably be called 
the divine inspiration of the sacred volume. This proves that 
that which determines its moral and spiritual value is not a 
matter involved in the dispute between theologians as to 
whether an inspired book may or may not contain mistakes. 

Some churchmen speak with the vision and voice of a 
prophet; others are best described as echoes and transmitters 


INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE 323 


of tradition—which fact, however, by no means indicates that 
their faith is not as sincere as it would be if they had broken 
with traditional views. When the late Bishop J. M. Thoburn 
of India retired from the active duties of the Episcopal office 
because of age, Dr. James M. Buckley, Editor of the New York 
Christian Advocate, paid him the following personal tribute :— 


“There has never been a man like unto him in the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, for the purpose to which he devoted his life. 
With simplicity mingled with sagacity; with straightforward 
English, and yet at times, under inspiration reaching the spirit 
and the words of the ancient prophets, but more frequently of 
the apostle John, he has persuaded us when he could not con- 
vince, and convinced us when he could not persuade. Con- 
sequently he had his way, which he believed was God’s way.” 


This eminent missionary Bishop was a great Bible student, 
and not long before he died he wrote as follows concerning 
the subject of Biblical inspiration :— 


“The inspiration of the Bible as a whole cannot be made to 
depend upon the verbal or incidental accuracy of each and 
every event which finds mention in its pages any more than a 
modern preacher’s call can be made to depend upon the knowl- 
edge of grammar and history. A thousand times it has hap- 
pened that present-day preachers whose lips have been touched 
with living coals from the altar in the skies have made blun- 
ders in historical, scientific, or literary references; but these 
blunders do not even touch the question of the Spirit’s call 
to them, or of their fidelity as messengers of the living God. 
. . . Not since the days of Luther has there been more need 
of forbearance, toleration, and absolutely free inquiry than 
at the present hour. Never since the time of Moses has the 
ark of God been in less actual danger, and never has the 
Leader of Israel been more manifestly present in the van of 
his militant host than in this year of our Lord. This is no 
time for raising cries of alarm, for predicting disaster, or for 
putting marks on men to indicate that they are unsound in 
faith, That man is most orthodox who has most of the 
Christ-life in his heart and best illustrates it in his daily walk.” 


324 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Scarcely less apostolic in his faith and ministry was the 
late Bishop James W. Bashford, who gave his life, after his 
election to the Episcopal office, almost wholly to China. He 
was a great Bible reader; and he read and interpreted the 
Bible from the modern scholar’s point of view. Here is what 
his biographer has to say about his method of reading and 
interpreting the Bible: 


“Every year he read the Bible through, marking passages 
which met the need of the time, jotting down his reflections 
upon the margin. His journal reveals the depth and the sanity 
of his devotion and his constant dependence upon the Bible 
for spiritual food. His habit of daily Bible reading 1 is illumi- 
nating. He read the Bible with the most reverent thought- 
fulness. To him the Book was never a fetish on the one hand, 
nor, on the other, a mere textbook of religion. The Scrip- 
tures were the channel of his communion with God, the food 
upon which his inner life fed. The margins of his Bibles 
were covered with notes which reveal the yearning search 
which he was making continually for spiritual light and lead- 
ing. He marked certain passages which were associated with 
important occasions or unusual experiences in his life. After 
reading the Bible through for 1905, his notebook entry is: 
‘To-day I finished reading through the Bible for 1905. I 
feel the folly of the contention of the critics. The Bible 
has mistakes and is partly, indeed wholly, human, as to the 
agency through which it comes to us, and bears over and over 
again the marks of its human agents. On the other hand, its 
divine power manifests itself in the life of each one who will 
obey it. The Book never meant so much to me as it does 
to-day.’ ” 


Rev. Dr. H. Hastings Rashdall, Dean of Carlisle, and one 
of the most brilliant and representative scholars and theolo- 
gians of the Church of England, gives the following high 
estimate of what modern science and Biblical scholarship have 
done with and for the conception of God as he is revealed 
in the Old Testament, and for the clearer and fuller revela- 
tion of him by Jesus Christ :— 


INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE 325 


“T believe that modern science and the historical study of 
the Bible have given us, not only truer but higher and more 
spiritually helpful ideas about human life than the beliefs 
which are being outlived. And not only so, but the new truth, 
so far from over-shadowing or supplanting what was really 
valuable in the traditions of the past, has been the means of 
helping us to understand and appreciate better than ever before 
that great central revelation which God has once for all made 
of himself in our Lord Jesus Christ. I am fully persuaded 
that many of the changes which have in the course of the last 
century or so passed over human thought do not merely rep- 
resent an advance from the point of view of science and his- 
tory, but tend to give us higher and nobler ideas about God, 
about Christ, about the meaning and purpose of human life 
than. those which they have superseded.”’ 


A few years ago Dr. John Watson (“Ian Maclaren”) pre- 
pared a course of lectures on the Bible titled ‘“‘God’s Message 
to the Human Soul.” He died before delivering them. In 
this volume he says :— 


“As you travel down Old Testament history you may 
find yourself sometimes in strange byways, but sooner or later 
you are brought face to face with God. The writers are intent 
upon one thing, and that is righteousness; they are ever seek- 
ing for one Person, and that is God. There is not only a 
progress, but it is a progress upwards; from the valley the 
path climbs the hillside, till it reaches the finer and rarer air 
of the Gospels, where we are living in the outer court of 
eternity and at the gate of heaven. The innumerable details 
of the Book are only its body; the living soul of the Book is 
religion, the fellowship of man with God. We lay aside the 
history which is but the stalk and the leaf of the plant; we 
garner the grain, which is the revelation of God. One supreme 
purpose governs and illuminates, invigorates and_ glorifies 
the Bible, and that is its moral and spiritual truths. These are 
the things that make the Bible to be the world’s one supreme 
Book of religion, and explain its moral supremacy in the 
literature and life of the world.” 


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CHAPTER THIRTEEN 


THE PLACE OF MIRACLES IN MODERN 
APOLOGETICS 


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CuHarTer THIRTEEN 


THE PLACE OF MIRACLES IN MODERN 
APOLOGETICS 


There is no term more characteristic of the Christian reli- 
gion as set forth in the writings of theologians of past genera- 
tions than the word “supernatural.” It carried along with it 
in an important sense the entire contents of the Christian rev- 
elation. Nature and Revelation were correlated and contrasted 
with each other in a way to indicate that that which peculiarly 
distinguished and defined revelation was the supernatural origin 
and character of the truths contained in the Scriptures of 
the Old and New Testaments. There is perhaps no point of 
approach to the study of Christian Apologetics, and of the 
grounds of theistic and Christian belief that will more quickly 
reveal the old and new methods of setting forth the evi- 
dences of Christianity than to consider the change that has 
come about in the manner of interpreting the supernatural 
and the place assigned to it among the great arguments to 
prove the existence of God and the divine character of the 
Christian religion. It is in studying miracles that we come 
more directly perhaps than anywhere else to realise what the 
change in emphasis from the transcendence to the immanence 
of God really means in its bearing on the interpretation of the 
Divine Being and his government of the world. In like manner 
we find that whereas the older generation of theologians found 
in the miracles of Christ proofs of his physical transcendence 
the theologians of to-day see in them, as their greatest element 
of value, a revelation of an ethical transcendence which gives 
them their greatest significance and their greatest revelation 
value to the present generation. The tendency of modern Apol- 
ogetics is to attach less importance to the physically supernat- 
ural in Christianity and increasingly more importance to that 


which is ethically transcendent and supernatural. 
329 


330 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 
I 


THE PLACE OF MIRACLES IN TRADITIONAL 
THEOLOGY 


Of all religious truth that which is most important and 
most needs the clear light of divine revelation is the knowledge 
of God; and the doctrine of God which the Christian religion 
has given to the world 1s its first and greatest contribution 
to mankind. When man, in'the dim twilight of nature, un- 
aided by supernatural revelation, has done the very best that 
he can do to arrive at a true knowledge of God it is 
yet found that his knowledge of the Divine Being 1s so im- 
perfect that it needs to be both supplemented and corrected 
by a divine revelation from above. Only after considering the 
divinest of all the supernatural means and methods whereby 
God has revealed himself to the world, that of the incarnation 
of his Son, are we prepared to consider most advantageously 
to what extent miracle and prophecy may be appealed to as 
modes of divine revelation preceding and accompanying the 
revelation made in and by Christ. In discussing the subject 
of miracles here and now, we shall assume, what is later to 
be considered most carefully, the supernatural character of 
Christ’s divine-human personality. 


1. The Argument from Miracles 


The traditional and long prevalent view of miracles and of 
their evidential value as a credential of divine revelation may 
be stated as follows: A miracle is an event in the natural and 
external world which is altogether beyond and above the 
power of man or the course of nature to accomplish, and which 
can be explained in no other way than as a special and extraor- 
dinary intervention of the Supreme Will and Power within 
the realm of nature’s laws. Miracles were wrought for the 
specific and avowed purpose of revealing the nature and will 
of God and of attesting the divine commission of certain chosen 
men through whom God has been pleased to communicate his 
will to the world. To serve this purpose it was necessary that 
they should not be done “in a corner,” but, as was the case 


PLACE OF MIRACLES IN RELIGION 331 


with most of the great miracles recorded in the Scriptures, 
publicly and openly, where they could be tested and proved. 
The Biblical books contain a record of many such events. As- 
suming the historical trustworthiness of these books, the argu- 
ment based on the recorded facts may be stated as follows :— 


“Looking backward through all the economies, we see that 
the great assemblages of miracles were wrought at crises preg- 
nant with importance to the great cause in the Old Testament. 
The ante-Mosaic miracles were authentications, not of God’s 
messengers only, but of his own dread name and attributes. 
At the introduction of the Mosaic institute there was reason for 
the glorious manifestations of the divine power, rebuking the 
long-endured perverseness of Egypt, authenticating the Law- 
giver so slowly accepted by his own people, proving the di- 
vinity of what we call the Mosaic economy, and confirming 
that proof by signs following down to the miraculous entrance 
into Canaan. While the Theocracy lasted, every recorded 
wonder attested at the critical hour that Jehovah reigned. The 
miracles which clustered around the persons of Elijah and 
Elisha asserted Jehovah’s supremacy at a time when his cause 
was at stake in the chosen land. And, finally, after long com- 
parative cessation, there was a great and in some respects 
unexampled renewal of miracles to rescue the sinking faith of 
the people during their captivity. The miracles of Scripture 
are most confessedly worthy of the cause they support. They 
effectually teach the lessons of the divine will and illustrate 
the divine perfections. Not a miracle in the whole Bible fails 
to demonstrate either the power or the fidelity or the wisdom 
or the justice or the mercy of God.” 


These words from an English theologian of a generation 
ago (Dr. W. B. Pope) constitute a clear statement of the 
“argument from miracles’ so much relied on by the Christian 
apologetes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 


2. Christ and Miracles 


If ever a person has appeared in history who could and 
should have worked miracles, that person is the Jesus of the 
four Gospels. For such a person as he is described to have 


332 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


been to perform deeds of more than ordinary power, “mighty | 
works”’ described as supernatural, is altogether natural. The — 
most natural supernaturalism described in the Bible, therefore, — 


is that associated with the person of Christ. He who would 


most strongly defend the supernatural in Christianity wisely — 


places in the foreground the divine-human Christ and the 
miracles attributed to him. No other supernaturalism is alto- 
gether so sane and so divine as that which surrounds him. If 
the inspired narratives are to be credited, the miracles attrib- 
uted to him had the effect they were intended to produce— 
to carry men’s thoughts first to God, and later to Christ him- 
self as God. ‘Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come 
from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, 
except God be with him.” The miracle-working power thus 
culminated in our Lord, whose life, although it was in a sense 
the most natural and human of all lives, was also in a sense 
one prolonged miracle, proving not only that he was “a 
teacher come from God,” but proving also—seeing that he 
wrought all his miracles by his own power—that he was him- 
self very God as well as very man. “If,” said our Lord to his 
Apostles, “I had not done among them the works which 
none other man did, they had not sinned by their unbelief.” 
And in like manner God himself seems to have said of and 
to mankind: “If I had not done in the world the works 
which no man could do, there could be no sin in doubting or 
denying my existence, my presence, and my power in the 
world.” 


3. The Miracles of the Old Testament 


After the miracles of Christ, the next best examples of mira- 
cles possessed of high moral value are to be found perhaps 
in the life and work of Moses, certainly so if we are to go 
to the Old Testament for our illustration of what miracles 
can do in the case of individuals and nations. When God would 
do a great work in the world through Moses and the Hebrew 
people, he began by revealing himself to them and awakening 
within them a sense of the reality of his own existence and 
of his sovereign power and authority over them. This was 


PLACE OF MIRACLES IN RELIGION 333 


accomplished in the only way in which it could then have been 
effectively accomplished—by a series of personal experiences 
and an exhibition of mighty works which are designed to 
reveal not only his presence and power, but also his holy char- 
acter and his will and purpose concerning them. Without the 
experience of Moses at the burning bush in the Arabian desert 
revealing God as Jehovah, the great I Am, there could never 
have been a leader like Moses in Hebrew history; and without 
some such “mighty works” as those wrought in Egypt, making 
yet other revelations and experiences of God, it is, indeed, not 
easy to see how that race of Hebrew slaves to whom Moses 
went with his divine message could ever have been rallied 
around a religious leader and transformed into a great nation. 
And: yet further, it is impossible to conceive of that newly 
formed and feeble nation becoming morally the most influential 
of all ancient nations, as they did indeed become, without taking 
into account the marvellous experiences and occurrences which 
transpired from time to time in their history, and which were 
interpreted by them as interpositions and demonstrations of 
the divine Presence and Power. 

It was the superior knowledge of God possessed by the He- 
brews which more than any other one thing explains their 
moral superiority and influence in history; and it was the 
events which they interpreted as miracles wrought by Jehovah 
in the beginning and throughout the entire course of their 
history which, if we are to trust the sacred narrative, more 
than any other one thing explains their superior knowledge of 
God. If God had revealed himself in a special manner to the 
Hebrew people for their own sakes alone, that they might have 
and keep to themselves the knowledge he gave, such election 
and partiality could not be reconciled with the character of an 
infinitely perfect Being who was the common God and Father 
of all men; but whatever of moral privileges and favour he 
imparted to them was for the benefit not of themselves alone 
but of all mankind. Divine election is indeed a privilege, but, 
far from being an expression of favouritism, it is in reality a 
call to service and an investment with moral responsibility and 
divine obligations. 


334 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


God revealed himself by signs and wonders to the Hebrews — 
that they might know him and reveal him to the world. 
Viewed in this light the mighty works and wonders of He- 
brew history are full of moral significance and in every way 
worthy of God. Certain it is that some experiences and 
events occurred in Hebrew history, which resulted in their 
having an immeasurably higher knowledge of God than that 
possessed by any other ancient nation; and certain it is that 
their historians have described many of these experiences 
and events in terms which have caused them to be called 
miracles and interpreted as supernatural. Far more important, 
however, is it that experiences and events that occur in the 
life of a man or a nation shall impart a true knowledge of 
God and a high sense of obligation to others than it is that 
these experiences and events shall be supernatural. The nat- 
uralness or supernaturalness of an experience or event may be 
a matter of interpretation; and we can conceive that one and 
the selfsame experience or event could be interpreted and de- 
scribed by one person as something supernatural and by an- 
other as natural. God is the God of nature just as truly as 
of supernature. If one experience or event is to be accounted 
more “divine” than another, this quality of greater or less 
“divineness’ is not determined by the matter of its being 
natural or supernatural but by its moral influence and effect 
in imparting a truer and higher knowledge of God and of 
moral life and duty. This is the “miracle” that is the crown- 
ing experience of God’s people. The miracles, then, in He- 
brew history which we are most concerned to have the proof of 
are those divine experiences and events that led them to a true 
knowledge of God and moral duty. This is the true measure of 
the supernatural in a nation’s history, the morally miraculous, | 
beside which the physically miraculous is relatively unimpor- 


tant. 
II 


ARE MIRACLES HELPS OR HINDRANCES TO FAITa? 


Are miracles, as traditionally defined, helps or hindrances to 
faith in God in our day? Has the modern mind become so 


PLACE OF MIRACLES IN RELIGION 335 


scientific in its interpretation of nature as to believe that na- 
ture’s laws are not only uniform but immutable, and that 
any and all events recorded in the Scriptures involving an in- 
terruption of these laws by supernatural or superhuman 
forces are positive hindrances and not helps to faith in the 
Bible? There are those who answer this last question in the 
affirmative and say that miracles have to be carried as liabili- 
ties and not as assets in the propagation of the Christian faith 
in our day. “The instinctive faith of the modern temper,” 
says an eminent religious leader of England, “may be ex- 
pressed in this formula: I believe in an order that admits no 
miracle and knows no supernatural.’”’ And suppose we should 
be compelled to admit that to many modern believers in Chris- 
tianity miracles have come to be difficulties and hindrances 
to faith and that the “argument from miracles’ has largely 
disappeared from modern apologetics, would it follow that we 
are to regard every record of a miraculous event in the Bible 
as either a misstatement or a misinterpretation of what oc- 
curred? Such an inference would be wholly unwarranted. 
But so vital is the bearing of the study and interpretation of 
miracles on faith in God, that no one who is making a survey 
of the paths that lead to God in our day, or in any day, 
can afford to omit this subject from his studies. We desire 
to point out what changes in emphasis have taken place in the 
presentation of the “argument from miracles’ as it bears on 
our conception of God as both transcendent and immanent in 
his relation to nature. 


1. The Natural and the Supernatural Alike Divine 


Our conception of nature and its laws and of their relation 
to the immanent and ever-active Creator and Preserver of the 
universe, as presented in the chapter titled “Through Nature to 
God,” might be interpreted as relating God so vitally and 
causally to nature as to render the supernatural superfluous 
and unnecessary. But the inference may also be drawn from 
that conception of God and nature, that if God be so vitally 
related as is there claimed to the regular, ordinary and uni- 
form operations of natural law, it is easy to see how—indeed, 


336 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


it is altogether reasonable to expect that—if there should arise — 
sufficient cause for bringing about some events out of the 
ordinary, regular and uniform order of nature, then the method — 
of securing these extraordinary results or events might be 
called supernatural. Under this conception, however, the nat- 
ural and the supernatural would be alike divine—the latter no 
more divine than the former. Indeed, if this interpretation 
of nature and the supernatural, as alike related to and depend- 
ent upon the immanent and everywhere active personal God, 
be correct, the most important fact proved by anything super- 
natural would be not that God could do something “super- 
natural,” but that he is absolute Master of nature, and the 
operation of all its laws are absolutely and immediately under 
his control and are but an expression of his own ceaseless 
activity. 

Does not the regular and ordinary working of the law of 
gravitation throughout the physical universe call for and mani- 
fest a divine power more truly than any irregular and extraor- 
dinary interruption of that law possibly could? Do not the 
operations of nature’s laws in connection with the ever-re- 
curring seasons, producing seedtime and harvest, and supply- 
ing food for all living creatures, call for and manifest the 
power and goodness and love of God more than the sending 
of food to a hungry prophet by a raven possibly could? Do 
not the maintenance of the regular beating of the human heart 
and the circulation of the blood and the operation of the diges- 
tive organs in the human body call for and manifest divine 
power in the preservation of the life of the race more than 
the raising of a dead man to life possibly could? Whatever 
need and evidence there may be for the supernatural, we must 
never allow ourselves to believe that it calls for and manifests 
the Divine more truly than does the natural if the natural be 
rightly interpreted and rightly related to God? This being 
true, we approach the examination of the subject of the super- 
natural in the Christian religion with the antecedent feeling 
that if we should find it here or there, it will be something, 
not occult, uncanny and suggestive of magic and mystery, but 
an out-of-the-ordinary intervention of divine power to accom- 


PLACE OF MIRACLES IN RELIGION 337 


plish results extraordinary, events all the more impressive and 
effective because of the fact that they are not in the regular 
and uniform natural order. It becomes then simply a question 
as to whether an end sought can be best accomplished by ordi- 
nary natural means or in a manner out of the ordinary by 
methods or means supernatural but not unnatural. 

Let us apply this method of approach to the consideration 
of what is perhaps the greatest of all miracles in the Christian 
system, the resurtection of the physical body of Jesus Christ 
from the dead. Let us suppose now that the divine motive and 
end in this miracle was not for a moment to show forth God’s 
power as a wonder worker by calling forth from the tomb a 
dead man and having the uncanny body to move about mys- 
teriously here and there, now like a spirit unrecognised, and 
now like the Christ the disciples had known in the flesh—not 
this at all. Suppose, on the contrary, that the one great need 
was that the discouraged disciples might be saved from the utter 
despair that threatened them after the crucifixion of their 
Lord, and that it was all important for them to know that, 
although he had been crucified, he was himself not dead but 
alive forever more, and Lord of life and death, their Captain 
and their King—could this all-important end have been ac- 
complished, had the body of the crucified Christ been allowed 
to moulder in the tomb in the ordinary and natural manner ? 
Most of us who are Christians believe that the miracle of the 
resurrection was necessary in order to “save the day” at this 
critical juncture and not only preserve faith alive but give 
it the power of endless life and conquest. The end justified 
the means. 

Many who do not believe that any physical resurrection at 
all awaits those who die, yet believe that the physical body of 
‘Jesus Christ arose from the dead, and that it was a supernatural 
event fully justified by the conditions that confronted the dis- 
ciples after the crucifixion—in which case, the mission of this 
resurrection body having been fully accomplished, it may have 
supernaturally vanished away, even as it had supernaturally 
come; or it may have taken such material form as do the 
disintegrated and dissipated bodies of the other dead. Those 


338 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


of course, who believe in the resurrection of all physical bodies 
(which is the traditional faith of the Christian Church), 
simply believe that Christ, retaining his resurrection body, 
became in so doing, as the inspired writer expresses it, “the 
first-fruit of them that sleep.” This is mentioned only to 
show how that, in spite of much speculation and difference of 
opinion as to the reality and nature of a physical resurrection 
for those who die, faith in the resurrection of Christ from 
the dead as an extraordinary and supernatural event is well 
nigh universal among Christian believers. That Christ 
brought life and immortality to light in the Gospel, and that 
the immortality of the soul is the most vital and precious ele- 
ment in that revelation of the future life, is also the faith of 
all Christians. If his resurrection from the dead, and the 
revelations made by him during the forty days between his 
resurrection and ascension, were necessary to establish and 
make permanent faith in this vital doctrine of Christianity— 
which many think is the case—we have herein an important 
reason, additional to that above, for the miracle of the res- 
urrection, belief in which has been called “‘the article of a stand- 
ing or falling faith.” 


2. The Supernatural Reinforcement of the Natural 


If God reveals something of himself and of his will 
through physical nature and yet more through human nature, 
it is nevertheless universally recognised that this natural and 
ordinary revelation is inadequate to meet man’s deepest spirit- 
ual needs, being insufficient to impart a wholly satisfying 
knowledge of God. The revelation of nature is good as far 
as it goes, but it needs to be supplemented, as men’s gropings 
after God show, by some additional light—something to sup- 
plement the natural and the human revelation. The light of 
nature is like twilight—it furnishes light enough to show us 
which way to travel, and proves that there is a sun, a source 
of light, somewhere; but the sun itself during the twilight is 
hid from our sight. The light of the Christian revelation in 
and through Christ is like the daylight, in that we not only 
have all the light needed but we can see the sun itself, the 


PLACE OF MIRACLES IN RELIGION 339 


source from which the light emanates. In the Bible and the 
Christian religion we have what is common to designate as a 
“supernatural” revelation. Whether this term rightly or 
wrongly designates and describes that revelation may be open 
to question, but certain it is that those who have had the benefit 
of its light have had a knowledge of God possessed by no 
others. 

The history of the various races of mankind who have de- 
rived their knowledge of God entirely from nature and reason 
and tradition has been one not merely of a groping after God, 
but of a flickering faith and a perpetual wandering from God, 
and is the best possible proof of the absolute necessity of 
some such revelation from God and of God as we possess in 
the Bible and the Christian religion in order to furnish man 
with a true knowledge both of himself and of his Creator. 
What we need to do, is to put the emphasis not on God’s doing 
something supernatural in the physical world, to show forth 
his physical transcendence and power over nature; but on his 
doing something in the experience of the Hebrew nation that 
led them to interpret him more truly and to reach a better 
knowledge of him than other nations attained unto. The 
superior knowledge of God and the moral law which they at- 
tained unto is the all-important thing that we are concerned 
with; because that has been transmitted to us, and is ours as 
well as theirs. How they interpreted the experiences that led 
them into this higher and truer knowledge of God, whether 
they should be described as supernatural or not is a secondary 
matter. Let us be sure that we put the emphasis at the right 
place, not abandoning miracles but viewing them from this 
ethical angle. 


III 
REACTION AGAINST MIRACLES 


However strongly this “argument from miracles’ has ap- 
pealed to past generations and may still appeal to a certain 
type of believers in our day, it is not now, at least in its tradi- 
tional form as presented above, relied upon by modern Chris- 


340 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


tian apologists generally to convince men of the divine charac- 
ter of the Biblical revelation. To test the accuracy of this 
statement one needs only to examine the contents of recent 
representative volumes of Apologetics. What he will find 
is, not a denial of the supernatural, but a reinterpretation of 
it—an interpretation of it not as something unnatural or 
extra-natural or preter-natural but as an extraordinary mani- 
festation of the presence and power of the immanent and 
everywhere active God to whom what we call the natural and 
the supernatural are all one. It is not uncommon now, as we 
have already observed, to hear men say that miracles are hin- 
drances rather than helps to faith in our day. This is equiva- 
lent to saying that men do not now believe in God and the 
Bible, in Christ and Christianity, because of miracles; they 
rather believe that such miraculous events as those described 
in the Bible did actually once occur only because they already, 
and for other reasons, believe in God and the Bible, in Christ 
and Christianity. 


1. Radical Criticism Stated and Answered 


As a representative of those who entertain radically critical 
views and who regard miracles as serious incumbrances to 
modern Christianity we may quote from Dr. Frederick Paul- 
sen who says: “The Biblical miracles belong to a category of 
world-views which has disappeared, or at least cannot long 
survive. I do not believe that the Church can ever again win 
the confidence of thinking men until she decides to discard the 
belief in miracles. All endeavours to make the miracles of 
the Bible appear credible simply serve to increase the distrust. 
It may be that miracles and signs were once needed to 
strengthen the faith of the Church; at present they merely 
discredit it.”’* When Professor Paulsen says, as he does here, 


1 Among eminent theologians and Bible scholars of Great Britain who 
have regarded miracles as serious difficulties in the way of faith, and 
have found a way to explain the Scripture miracles to their own satis- 
faction as events involving nothing abnormal or supernatural in the ordi- 
nary sense of that term, is the late Dr. Sanday of Oxford University. See 
the chapter on ‘The Nature of Miracles” in his volume titled “Divine Over- 
ruling” (1920). See also “Religion and Miracle” by George A. Gordon. 


PLACE OF MIRACLES IN RELIGION B41 


that ‘it may be that miracles were once needed to strengthen 
the faith of the Church,” he indicates how best to answer his 
own declaration of disbelief in miracles. For, if ‘miracles 
were once needed,” it cannot be thought a thing incredible or 
even unreasonable that God would meet the real need that 
existed. 

Over against this position of Dr. Paulsen, then, the Chris- 
tian apologist may reply and state himself thus: Miracles were 
necessary to the introduction of the Christian religion in the 
world. They were continued by God as accompaniments to 
the revelations of his will as long as they were needed; but 
when “‘the fulness of time’ was come, when the long accumu- 
lating body of revelations was complete and the perfect Re- 
vealer had come and brought his final revelation to man and 
set his seal to this body of divinely revealed truth, and when 
faith in God, as revealed in and by Christ, had come to be 
a matter of subjective personal experience, then miracles, being 
no longer needed, were discontinued. They were discontinued 
because the time had come when the propagation of the faith 
would be accomplished more rapidly and effectively without 
the continued working of miracles than with them. Chris- 
tianity needed these supernatural props and protection when 
it was young and was taking root in the soil of humanity 
where it had been planted. Now it has come to pass not only 
that they are no longer needed; but even an appeal to them as 
having once been wrought is not now needed. A stranger 
may present important credentials in order to be received and 
believed in; and he may be received and trusted because of 
these credentials. After long years of faithful service, if he 
should produce and present these same credentials to a later 
generation, they would be believed to be genuine by the new 
generation only because men believe in him. First they be- 
lieved in him because they believed in his credentials ; now they 
believe that his old credentials, the use of which was long ago 
discontinued, are genuine and true because they believe in 
him. So it may be with the miracles of the Christian religion 
—that credentials, being no longer needed, should be no longer 
used, is entirely consistent with their being not only genuine 


342 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


but of the highest value at the time when they were needed 
and used.* 


2. Do Biblical Miracles Furnish Proof or Need Proof? 


Tn the view of many, therefore, miracles, instead of being 
proofs, are the things which most of all need proof in our 
scientific age; instead of being a ground on which we believe 
in the inspiration of the Bible we must needs believe in the 
truth of the Biblical record, and that very fully, in order to 
believe that events, so contrary to the universal experience of 
all men now living, ever did really occur. “If miracles were, 
in the estimation of a former age, among the chief supports 
of Christianity,’ said the late Baden Powell, “they are at 
present among the main difficulties and hindrances to its ac- 
ceptance.” The flood, destroying the entire human race with 
the exception of Noah and his family, turning a rod into a 
serpent and the river Nile into blood, the destruction of the 
first-born in every home in Egypt in one night, the budding 
of Aaron’s rod, healing disease by looking at a brazen serpent, 
Lot’s wife transformed into a pillar of salt because she looked 
back at the burning city, the stopping of the waters of the 
Jordan river, the fall of Jericho’s walls at the blowing of the 
trumpets, Joshua’s staying the sun and the moon in their 
course to give the children of Israel advantage in battle, the 
miraculous burning of the sacrifice soaked in water on Mt. 
Carmel, the appearance of Samuel’s ghost to Saul in the 
condemned haunt of the witch of Endor, the cure of Naaman’s 
leprosy by bathing in the Jordan, making the iron axe to swim, 
smiting the entire Syrian army with blindness, the resurrec- 
tion of the dead man by touching Elisha’s bones, the destruc- 
tion of Sennacherib’s army in a night, the preservation of the 
three Hebrew children in a fiery furnace, and of Daniel in 
the lion’s den, and of Jonah in the whale’s belly—these and 
all similar marvellous and unnatural events, if they were found 
in any other book of ancient literature rather than in the 
Bible, would, it is granted, be regarded simply as myths or 


1 This was the method of stating the “argument from miracles” employed 
by the late distinguished Danish theologian, Dr. H. L. Martensen. 


PLACE OF MIRACLES IN RELIGION 343 


legends, and no faith would be placed in them as actual oc- 
currences. The records, moreover, that should contain them, 
instead of being thereby elevated into special value, importance, 
and trustworthiness, would, by the very presence of such 
stories in them be so seriously discounted as to forfeit any 
claim they might otherwise have to being regarded as a trust- 
worthy record of facts. Why then, it is being asked more 
and more, should we not only believe them when found in the 
Bible, but actually appeal to them as proofs that the Buble 
is a divinely inspired volume? If this question is reasonable, 
it demands a reasonable answer. 

Now those who hold this view—that miracles are hindrances 
rather than helps to faith in the Bible in our day—do not 
necessarily deny that Scripture miracles really occurred; many 
of, those holding this view are as ready to defend the truth- 
fulness of the records as those who regard miracles as possessed 
of the highest value in confirming the doctrine of Biblical 
inspiration. But they regard them as hindrances to faith, 
and think they ought to be treated, not as forceful evidences 
to be placed in the foreground, but rather as difficulties, to be 
thrown in the background and calling for defence and ex- 
planation. 

This class of theological writers is in the habit of discount- 
ing the so-called “external evidences’ of Christianity as of little 
or no value, and of placing the whole emphasis upon the 
“internal evidences’’—that is, upon those self-evidencing moral 
and spiritual teachings of the Bible that need no external evi- 
dences to give them authority. For instance, do the sublime 
messages of the prophet Isaiah, or the Sermon on the Mount, 
or the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, they ask, need 
any miracles to authenticate them or make them seem divinely 
inspired? The moral and spiritual truths of the Bible that 
carry the evidence of their divine origin within them are the 
“gold and silver,” and all else is regarded by them as “wood, 
hay and stubble.” It is an “evil and adulterous generation’”’ 
that “seeketh after a sign,’ and while God has condescended 
to answer, in part at least, their demand, yet these words imply 
that a holy and spiritual generation would be raised above 


344 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


the necessity of seeking these signs. Miracles belong, like pic- 
tures, to the spiritual childhood of the race, and they who 
continue to be dependent on miracles as the foundation of 
their faith in the Bible never rise beyond a child’s conception 
of God and divine truth. Miracles, therefore, say these writ- 
ers, have little or no value now as evidences of the divine 
character of the Christian religion, and its Bible; and if 
thinking men in this day and generation believe the Scriptures 
to be the word of God—as most assuredly unnumbered multi- 
tudes do—it is not because of, but rather in spite of, the 
miracles they contain. 

We may say, then, in answer to the question as to whether 
the Biblical miracles furnish proof or themselves need proof, 
that both may be true—they may need proof for our day, such 
historic and rational proof either direct or circumstantial as 
would be required for establishing the certitude of any event. 
Then, having been thus proved, they take their proper place 
among the credentials of the Christian religion. 


3. Miracles, Magic and Science 


In the days when mankind generally believed in magic, 
witchcraft, sorcery and such like things, all pretending to com- 
mand superhuman powers, the problem was rightly to relate 
miracles to and differentiate them from these uncanny expres- 
sions of faith in the supernatural; but in our day, in our 
scientific age, the problem is rightly to relate miracles to the 
scientific interpretation of nature, to faith in the uniformity 
of nature’s laws. Professor E. H. Johnson, of Crozer Theo- 
logical Seminary, has coupled these three things together in 
an instructive manner in words which, with some condensa- 
tion, we here quote: 


“Miracles furnish another problem of divine rulership as 
to which imagination can be of service. Miracles have been 
discredited and good Christians have been distressed through 
unwitting confusion of miracles with magic. These differ 
entirely as regards the human intermediary, the superhuman 
doer and the work done. Magic claimed to be both science 
and art. As science it knew of secret resources in nature, and 


PLACE OF MIRACLES IN RELIGION 345 


-as art it had skill to use these. This was ‘white magic.’ 
But the magician might also be able to compel obedience from 
superhuman beings; and if this was through a compact with 
evil spirits, his art was ‘black magic.’ Had Jesus cast out 
demons through Beelzebub their prince, he would not have 
been a miracle-worker, but a sorcerer, an adept in black magic. 
He needed to vindicate himself from such a charge. We find, 
then, three distinguishing characteristics in magic: first, the 
human practitioner makes out by use of mystic forms of 
words, by drawing geometrical figures, by burning aromatics, 
or even through mechanical contrivances, actually to compel 
and control occult forces, natural or supernatural; secondly, 
the superhuman agent may be a minor divinity, a false god, 
but is always less than Deity, for magic never pretended to 
power over the Most High; thirdly, the result is characteristic 
of the actors. If these are good men, good genii, their work 
is good, in an earthly way, but it is without moral or spiritual 
significance. 

“Miracles were an affair neither of science nor of art. No 
one pretended to understand how miracles were done, nor 
to compel their production. If they came, they came only 
as gifts from their real worker. That worker was always 
God, either directly or by an angel sent for the purpose. Mira- 
cles were characteristic of their source. If they conferred a 
worldly benefit it was not without moral relations or aims. It 
was to aid somehow in setting up the kingdom of God among 
men, 

“Summarily, magic is by man’s art; miracle is a gift to 
men. Magic is by superhuman agents subject to the magician’s 
will; miracle is by God alone, and at his will alone. Magic is 
wrought through spells; miracle is granted to prayer. Magic 
is of earthly meaning; miracle is of spiritual meaning.”’ * 


4. The Miracles of Ecclesiastical History 


According to the faith of Protestants generally, the term 
“miracle” should not be used in describing events that have 
occurred since the apostolic age, whether they be ordinary or 


1“The Religious Use of the Imagination,” p. 109 ff. We can here merely 
refer to the connection between magic and miracle in religion. The student 
who wishes to make a careful and comprehensive study of this subject 
will find it treated at length in “The Golden Bough” by Sir James George 
Frazer, and in various works on Comparative Religion. 


346 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


extraordinary events. For there are, in the Protestant view, 
no well-authenticated miracles since that time. Roman Catho- 
lic history, on the contrary, abounds to this day in occur- 
rences that claim to be miracles, but which Protestants who 
investigate them find to be utterly lacking both in the evidence 
and in the moral credentials which could alone justify the 
recognition of them as miracles. 

There is perhaps no better way to destroy faith in super- 
natural religion and in the Biblical miracles than to tie them 
up with mythical and ecclesiastical miracles, as if they all 
belonged alike and equally to the supernatural order. The 
miracles of Christ are so sane, so beneficent, so ethical, that 
one needs only to compare and contrast them with the unsane, 
morbid, extravagant, unethical miracles of the mythical imagi- 
nation and of ecclesiastical history to discern at once the 
difference between miracles that are worthy and those that 
are unworthy of a divine Being. Take for instance, the mira- 
cles of the New Testament Apocrypha: They represent Jesus 
as acting often in a repellent and spiteful manner—he strikes 
a boy dead for running against him; he performed miracles 
like turning clay sparrows into living birds—performances 
that are mere prodigies, ostentatious displays of wonder-work- 
ing power that are not only utterly lacking in moral signifi- 
cance, but are sometimes wrought merely to gratify selfish 
whims and fancies. 

In marked contract with the miracles of Scripture are these 
apocryphal miracles, as are also the later miracles of ecclesiasti- 
cal history, some of which are thus described: 


“Jerome in his life of Hilarion gravely narrates such things 
as these: A certain Italicus, whose horses raced in the circus, 
prayed Hilarion to give him, since he was a Christian, a victory 
over his heathen rival, whereupon by water out of the cup from 
which the saint was accustomed to drink, the horses of Itali- 
cus were made to flee to the goal, while those of his heathen 
competitor stuck fast to the spot. Hilarion casts out a lascivi- 
ous devil from a maid who had been bewitched by certain 
magic figures and formulas buried beneath the threshold of 
her house. A gigantic camel which it took thirty men with 


PLACE OF MIRACLES IN RELIGION B47 


strong ropes to hold, because of its being possessed of a devil, 
was dispossessed by the saint of its indwelling devil. Again 
he commanded a mighty serpent which had been devouring 
oxen to ascend a pyre and be burned to ashes before all people. 
‘Many months after his death, his body being miraculously 
preserved as perfect as if alive, and fragrant with sweet 
odours, was borne from Cyprus to Palestine, and then after 
his burial, not only at the place where he was buried but even 
at places where he had been while living, great miracles were 
performed daily, in the one case by his dead body and in the 
other by his spirit. 

“St. Gregory’s miracles are even more marvellous than those 
of Hilarion described by Jerome, for he tells how certain of 
his Italian fathers or monks could treat the water as if it 
had been solid land; how pieces of gold, fresh from the mint, 
fell upon them from heaven; how floods which rose even 
to the roofs of churches did not enter in at the doors, though 
they stood wide open; how the arm of an executioner, uplifted 
to strike off a monk’s head, remained erect and fixed, sword 
and all, in the air, but power over it was restored on the prom- 
ise of being made never again to use it against a Christian. 

“Again the medizval friar would tell his hearers how a rob- 
ber, who had been always devout and regular in his prayers 
to the Virgin Mary, was at length taken and sentenced to be 
hanged, but when the cord was around his neck he prayed 
to his heavenly patroness, and she, with her own white hands, 
held him up two whole days; and so saved him from death. 
And again he would tell how a paper of Scriptural proofs, 
which St. Dominic had written to confound his opponents, 
leaped out of the fire into which it had been cast, while the 
documents of the opponents remained in the fire and were 
utterly consumed.” * 


As an example of modern ecclesiastical miracles we cite the 
following, quoting from the “Proceedings of the Society for 
meyenical Researchy« Vol..XX1,,pi.405): 


“Owing to the risk of a riot between the clerical and anti- 
clerical parties at Remiremont, on the Vosges, in 1907, the 
civic authorities thought it necessary to prohibit a specially 
important religious procession in honour of the Madonna. 


1 See Fairbairn’s “Philosophy of the Christian Religion.” 


348 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


A few days later there occurred a fall of large oval hail- 
stones, in which more than one hundred devout Catholics, 
including men, women and children, declared on oath that they 
had recognised images of the Madonna.”’ 4 


Now, if the miracles of Scripture were of no higher order © 


than these miracles of ecclesiastical history, the result would 
have been fatal to faith in the Scriptures, and to faith in a 
God who would exercise his power to work them; and yet 
St. Jerome, St. Gregory, and even St. Augustine, and many 
other church saints, gave credence to them. But this does 
not make us believe in them, even though we credit the saints 
named as trustworthy witnesses when it comes to matters of 
fact in Church history. 


IV 


THE REINTERPRETATION OF THE SUPERNATURAL 
AND REAFFIRMATION OF FAITH IN MIRACLES 


It is an unfortunate circumstance to be noted in connection 
with the study of miracles in our day that many take up the 
idea that any and all attempts to reinterpret them in a manner 
helpful to the modern scientific mind is at heart an effort to get 
rid of the supernatural—to explain it away rather than to ex- 
plain it. We do not feel that this suspicion is justified by 


the writings of the sanest and safest exponents of modern © 


Christian theism. 


1. The New Approach to the Supernatural 


The time was when the supernatural was regarded as some- — 
thing unnatural, an order so much above the natural as to © 
be not only distinguishable from it but separated from it; — 
and in like manner the superhuman was regarded as something — 
so far above and removed from the human as to be unhuman. — 
The tendency in our day is to find in the supernatural the — 
ideal natural, nature at its best, the natural in its highest ex-— 
pression; and to regard the superhuman as the human in its — 
highest and noblest visible expression. The old way of look- — 





PLACE OF MIRACLES IN RELIGION 349 


ing at the supernatural and superhuman was to have them sep- 
arated so far from the natural and the human that a great gulf 
or chasm intervened, and the invasion of the natural and 
human realms by or from the supernatural and superhuman 
resulted in a more or less violent interruption of the natural 
order by something preternatural and of the human modus 
operandi by preter-human forces. To the modern mind there 
is no great gulf of separation fixed between the natural and 
the supernatural. As there is no line that marks the boundary 
between the finite and the infinite in space, separating the one 
from the other,—as the one extends or merges imperceptibly 
into the other, so the natural and the supernatural, the human 
and the superhuman merge into each other. There is here a 
fountain, and there a rivulet and then a river and out yonder 
the unbounded ocean; but they merge into each other. 

The older theologians and thinkers approached the concep- 
tion of the supernatural and superhuman from the side of the 
infinite and the Divine, from the realm of the incomprehensi- 
ble and unknown; and they interpreted and explained the super- 
natural in terms of the divine transcendence. The modern 
approach to the supernatural and superhuman is from the side 
of the natural and the human, from the known to the un- 
known, and the tendency is to interpret and explain the miracu- 
lous more in terms of the natural and human as related to the 
divine immanence than was thought possible or even conceiv- 
able by those who made the other approach. The result that 
was to be expected duly followed, namely, those who interpreted 
the supernatural and superhuman in terms of the natural and 
human were thought by those who had long been accustomed 
to the other traditional method of interpretation to be getting 
rid of God and eliminating the Divine entirely. With this 
general reference to the change in method of approach and of 
interpretation, let us inquire as to how far a supernatural 
order has been revealed or discovered, and how the super- 
natural may be best interpreted and explained so as to make 
it a pathway to God for the scientific age in which we live, and 
which, though scientific, is none the less theistic in its belief 
than was the age that preceded it. 


350 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Traditional theology, as we have seen, interpreted God’s 
activity in the world in terms of transcendence, of super- 
naturalism, of occasionalism, of occasional intervention into 
the realm of nature and natural law; it was the unusual, 
the irregular, the extraordinary events and occurrences which 
were regarded as the special revelations and manifestations of 
the Divine presence and power. Modern theism, on the con- 
trary, tends to interpret the immanent God as the great per- 
sonal Power in the invisible Powerhouse of the universe, who 
is ceaseless in his operations in the realms of physical law, 
of vegetable and animal life, and of moral and rational exist- 
ence. When Marconi discovered that electricity was every- 
where in the air and the ether, that the “power-house”’ was 
everywhere, he furnished us with a new physical illustration of 
the immanence of God. This all-pervasive force or energy 
that we call electricity is the physical expression in the material 
universe of that omnipresent Personal Power that we recognise 
and worship as God. The regular and uniform laws of nature 
and of life, and the self-determining power exercised by free 
spiritual beings,—power to turn on and off the ever-moving 
currents of Divine energy at the commands of finite creatures, 
——power to tune in and catch from the radiant air the wireless 
and wordless messages that the Divine Being is always and 
everywhere sending forth to those of his creatures that have 
ears to hear and minds rightly to interpret his messages—this 
is something of what it means to interpret God in terms of im- 
manence and law, laws of matter, mind and spirit, all alike 
owing their origin and continued existence to Him who is at 
once not only the great personal Power in the everywhere 
present Power-house of the physical universe, but the Heavenly 
Father in the household of spirits, in whom centres and from 
whom radiates all that makes life sweet, lovable and beauti- 
ful—in whom we live and move and have our being. 


2. A Reinterpretation of the Supernatural 


Dr. Borden P. Bowne, writing of the false antithesis of the 
natural and supernatural characteristic of much popular 
thought, past as well as present, says: “For the full expres- 








PLACE OF MIRACLES IN RELIGION 351 


sion of our thought in this matter we have to maintain a 
supernatural natural, that is, a natural which roots in a divine 
causality beyond it; and also a natural supernatural, that is, 
a divine causality which proceeds by orderly methods. In 
such a view, events are supernatural in their causality, and 
natural in the order of their happening; and a so-called special 
providence would be simply an event in which the divine pur- 
pose and causality which are in all things, could be more clearly 
traced than in familiar matters.’’* And again, in his volume of 
“Studies in Christianity,’ he says: “The supernaturalism of 
to-day is concerned only to find God in nature, life, history, 
miracle—no matter where so long as it finds him; but it finds 
him predominantly in law and life. This is producing a sanity 
of religious thought beyond anything known in the past, and 
it is prophetic of still better things to come.” 

Among those who have reinterpreted the supernatural in 
terms of modern Christian thought and who believe profoundly 
in the immanence of God and the incarnation of his Son in 
the person of Jesus Christ, none has written more luminously 
than the late Dr. Lyman Abbott in his volume titled “Seek- 
ing After God,” in which will be found scattered paragraphs 
which we here bring together, thoughts of such value that 
we feel sure no reader will object to the length of the quota- 
tion: 


“T once conceived of God as sitting apart from his creation 
which he had made and ruling it, and apart from men whom 
he had made and ruling them from his faraway throne in 
heaven, and coming down ever and anon for special work, in 
“answer to our prayers, or for the accomplishment of special 
_providences. As long as I entertained this conception of God 
_as sitting apart from his universe and ruling it from a dis- 
| tance, it seemed to me that the most fundamental question 
in theology was, Do you believe in the supernatural? But 
now I no longer make the distinction between the natural and 
the supernatural as I once did. 

“When I thought that God sat apart from nature, ruling 
Over it as an engineer rules over his engine, then it seemed 


1“Theism,” p. 243. 


352 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


t 


to me to be of essential importance that one should believe in 
the supernatural, that is, in the One who was apart from 
nature, and ruled over it. But now that I believe that God is in 
nature, ruling through it, and im humanity, ruling in the hearts 
of men, all the natural seems to me most supernatural, and all. 
the supernatural most natural. For not now and then only in” 
special episodes and exceptional interferences does the finger 
of God appear. God is in all of nature; all its forces are the 
forces of God; all its laws are the methods of God; all its” 
activities are the activities of God. And in human nature the 
laws of God are the beatific influences which proceed from 
him, the spiritual forces projected from him as the rays from 
the sun, and which vivify the hearts of those who receive 
them. 

“God is himself the life of life. All things are his breath. 
Literally, scientifically, absolutely, in him all things live and 
move and have their being. The abolition of the distinction 
between natural and supernatural for the purpose of getting 
rid of the supernatural is one thing; the abolition of the dis- 
tinction for the purpose of affirming that the supernatural is 
in everything is quite another. This latter makes the natural 
itself supernatural. A miracle, therefore, no longer seems to 
me to be a manifestation of extraordinary power, but an ex- 
traordinary manifestation of ordinary power. God is always 
showing himself. Perhaps some of you may think this is 
a new theology; on the contrary, it is as old as St. Augustine, 
and as orthodox. It is Augustine who said that a birth is 
more miraculous than a resurrection, because it is more won- 
derful that something that never was should begin to be 
than that life which had once been in a body and had ceased 
to be, should be restored or revived again. 

“Do you ask me, now, if I believe in miracles, I answer: 
I believe in some, and some events that have been called mira- 
cles I do not believe in, and some of these which are found 
in the Bible I do not believe were ever intended to be regarded 
as miracles. The story of the great fish that swallowed a 
prophet I do not believe was ever intended to be taken as his- 
tory by the man who wrote it. Nor do I think that the story 
of the sun and moon standing still was ever intended by 
the man who wrote the narrative to be taken as history. But 
the resurrection of Jesus Christ seems to me to be the best- 


PLACE OF MIRACLES IN RELIGION 353 


attested fact of ancient history; attested by the witness of 
disciples whose interest would not have led them to attest 
it, and whose prejudices were all against their faith in it; 
attested by the change of the day of rest from the seventh day, 
which the Jewish nation had up to that time kept, to the first 
day, ever after celebrating the resurrection; attested by the 
growth and life of Christianity itself, which, if Christ did 
not rise from the dead, I must think was historically founded 
on either a great folly or a great fraud, and to believe that 
would be to believe that there is no moral order in the universe. 
That the disciples had ocular evidence which convinced them - 
against all their preconceptions that the Christ was living 
whom they thought was dead appears to me as certain as any 
fact in history can be.” * 


3. Reaffirmation of Faith in the Supernatural 


The sanity and beneficence of the miracles of Christ accord 
so: perfectly with his character that they seem entirely natural. 
Over against the mythical miracles of apocryphal and ecclesi- 
astical history, the ethical and altruistic miracles of: Christ 
appear so natural and so real that we can but feel that they 
are altogether like Jesus himself, who though supernatural, 
was not contra-natural or unnatural. 


“He heals the blind, the halt, the lame, the sick of the 
palsy; he brings comfort to the widow who had lost her son, 
and to the Gentile nobleman who mourns the death of his 
child. He creates joy in the heart of the woman who had 
sought counsel of many physicians and only grew the worse 
for all their attempts at healing. He goes through life like 
a kind of embodied beneficence, creating health and happiness 
wherever he goes. He incorporates and commands the energies 
that work against physical evil and for social good. In a 
sense his miracles are but the transcripts of his own character, 
the symbols of his mind and heart and instruments for the 
accomplishment of his moral and spiritual mission. They are, 
in a word, the physical counterparts of his own moral character 
and of his exalted ethical teachings. Their singular freedom 
from the qualities everywhere characteristic of the mythical 


1 “Seeking After God.” 


354 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


miracles places them in a category by themselves. One thing 
is certain: They could not have owed their freedom from 
these customary mythical adornments to the Evangelists them- 
selves; for they were men who stood, alike as regards age, 
culture and country, exactly at the stage when we expect the 
mythical consciousness to be creative and betray itself. But 
the miracles which the Evangelists attribute to Christ have 
an altogether exceptional character of moral sanity and ra- 
tional sobriety. It were indeed but the simple truth to say 
that the Evangelists are the most modern writers of Christian 
antiquity. With the most absolute and august idea of the 
supernatural to be found in the whole literature of religion, 
they have given it an expression so objective and realistic as 
to be without any parallel. If we compare them with Church 
Fathers like Tertullian, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, or 
with Augustine, telling of occurrences which he himself wit- 
nessed and designated as miracles, we are driven to the con- 
clusion that our Gospels are remarkable, above all other an- 
cient Christian histories, for critical caution and intellectual 
sanity.” * 


“The supernatural potencies which move within Jesus,” says 
Dr. Fairbairn, “leave him neither an extra-natural nor a con- 
tra-natural, nor a preter-natural person, but a person to himself 
and for himself strictly and surely natural, with powers which 
are to be understood and used as means to ethical and altru- 
istic ends, to increase the duty of obedience, to limit rather 
than enlarge the sphere of man’s independence of God.” ‘The 
Christian world is becoming, not less but more and more, con- 
vinced as time goes on, that Jesus verily possessed ‘“‘supernat- 
ural potencies within himself”; and if so, is it not altogether 
rational and probable that “supernatural potencies within” 
should find “supernatural expression without” in just such 
beneficent deeds in behalf of the souls and bodies of men as 
were the miracles of Jesus? 

But this reaffirmation of faith in the supernatural works 
of Christ based on faith in his supernatural Person does not 
mean that if in the case of any individual miracle attributed 
to him there should arise sufficient and satisfactory reasons for 


1 See “Philosophy of the Christian Religion,” PP. 330-341. 


PLACE OF MIRACLES IN RELIGION 355 


doubting or denying its genuineness, this, our confidence, in 
the supernatural Christ is to be shaken. Should any critic 
come along with convincing evidence that faith in the virgin 
birth of Jesus should be given up, I am not, therefore, going 
to give up faith in his other miracles. Or should he convince 
me that the miracle of cursing the figtree for not having fruit 
on it when the time of figs had not yet come—or that his 
causing the destruction of the herd of swine by driving into 
them the devils expelled from the Gadarene demoniac is so 
lacking in the usual combination of Christlike qualities as to 
create doubt as to whether it may not be a misinterpretation 
or an incorrect account of some event that occurred in his 
experience—should I be so convinced, this may cause me to be 
less confident in the absolute accuracy of the divine-human 
Book than I may have hitherto been, but it will not in the 
least shake my confidence in the supernatural character of 
Christ or my faith in the reality of his “mighty works.’ The 
Christlikeness of the many beneficent and unselfish deeds that 
crowded and crowned his busy life is self-evidencing. 


4. An Impressive Incident 


There is an incident that is frequently told that may furnish 
a fitting close to this chapter on miracles. About a half cen- 
tury ago it was that two young men of brilliant minds, who 
were regarded both by themselves and by others as infidels, 
sat talking about religion and its superstitions. The conversa- 
tion is said to have turned on Christ whose noble character 
as a man both of them fully recognised and acknowledged, 
and then on the miracles attributed to him, all of which they 
both regarded as mere myths born of superstition. They 
agreed that some one ought to write a book exposing the 
unreality and falseness of these so-called supernatural events ; 
the beautiful human life and character of the Son of Man 
should not be marred and discounted by such superstitious 
appendages as these unbelievable miracles. Agreeing heartily 
in the desirability of such a book being written, and written 
at once, the two friends raised the question as to who was 
best fitted to accomplish the task successfully. It was agreed 


356 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


that one of the two should undertake the task of showing the 
absurdity of the miracles found in the life of Christ. The 
other awaited in self-complacent and self-confident atheism 
the result of his friend’s literary labours. The friend in prep- 
aration for his task, proceeded to study the life of the human 
Jesus with a view to eliminating from it everything that 
claimed to be miraculous. But the more he studied and 
journeyed from day to day with the human Jesus, the greater 
the man seemed to be; and it was not long before the man 
Jesus grew to be so great that to this student he seemed to be 
more than a mere human being, and by the time this book 
about the Son of Man was finished, it was found to be a story 
of the earthly life of one who could most fittingly be called 
the Son of God. And the miracles were left undisturbed in 
his life just where they are found in the New Testament 
narratives. If this story has been rightly accredited, one of 
these two friends was the well-known infidel, Robert Ingersol, 
and the other was Lew Wallace, whose famous book titled 
“Ben Hur” is a story of the Christ which shows that if the 
author, in beginning his studies of his hero, believed that he 
was a mere man of only human gifts and virtues, before he 
finished his study he had reached the conclusion that miracles 
were a natural and fitting accompaniment to one who lived, 
loved, worked, suffered and died as did Jesus of Nazareth. 

If a man is willing to start with the human Jesus of the 
Synoptic Gospels and journey with him day by day for a 
season, we will not reproach him because he does not at first 
feel that Jesus is anything more than a remarkable human 
being of exceptionally beautiful moral and spiritual nature. 
For such a student and pilgrim Czsarea Philippi is on ahead, 
where if asked, “Who did you at first think Jesus to be?” he 
may reply: “I first thought him one like unto John the 
Baptist, or Elijah, or Jeremiah, or one of the great prophets.” 
But if further on we again ask: “Who do you now think 
Jesus to be?”, we shall confidently expect to receive an an- 
swer approximately like that of St. Peter: “Thou art the 
Christ, the Son of the living God!” If the incident referred to” 
above be not altogether accurate so far as concerns the two” 


PLACE OF MIRACLES IN RELIGION 357 


men named, its principal features can without doubt be dupli- 
cated in the lives of many others, who have had a similar 
experience in passing from doubt to faith in miracles by 
coming into intimate fellowship with Jesus and reaching the 
conclusion that he is verily the Son of the living God. 

The first and most important thing to present to and press 
upon seekers after God is not the historic creeds, or the “‘hy- 
postatic union” of two natures in Christ, or the mysteries of 
the Trinity, or the necessity of believing in the virgin-birth 
and other miracles—these all have their place in the faith and 
will come later—but the important thing to do first is to get 
the God-seeking soul into fellowship with Jesus who has a 
wonderful way of leading men to find the truth and the life 
that satisfies the heart. If any find it easiest to start with the 
human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, let them have their 
way; the divine Jesus of the fourth Gospel will come later. 
When one has fellowshipped for some time with Jesus, the 
miracles attributed to him so full of mercy and goodness, 
will not only seem natural but it will appear positively unnat- 
ural if such a one as he was had not done some such beneficent 
“mighty works” as those attributed to him. Miracles, said 
Thomas Arnold of Rugby, were but the natural accompani- 
ments of a life like that of Christ, accompaniments so appropri- 
ate to the Christian revelation that their absence would have 
been far more wonderful than their presence. 


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CHAPTER FOURTEEN 


THE PROPHETS AS INTERPRETERS AND 
REVEALERS OF GOD 


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Cuartrer FourtEENn 


THE PROPHETS AS INTERPRETERS AND 
REVEALERS OF GOD 


There is no group or succession of men in the history of 
any nation that ever made as notable a contribution to the 
moral greatness of their race as did the Hebrew prophets. 
Nor is there found in all literature, at least in literature 
antedating or subsequent to the Apostolic writings, any group 
or succession of writings whose contribution to the literature 
of their own race and of the world can be compared in its 
moral value and permanent moral influence to the Prophetical 
books of the Old Testament. And the explanation of this 
incomparable and far-reaching moral influence is found in 
the prophetic interpretation of God. Canon Mozley in his 
“Ruling Ideas in the Early Ages” calls attention to the fact 
that it was because Prophecy found a hospitable receptacle 
in the chosen race that it grew strong, and became an architect 
and builder, raised institutions and enacted ordinances. In 
Abraham it founded a family, in Moses a law, in David a 
Kingdom, in Amos, Isaiah and their fellow prophets a litera- 
ture and code of national ethics, and, because of this fact, the 
world in all subsequent time is their debtor. 

It was the distinguishing work of the Jewish people, says 
Dean Stanley, that their golden age was not in the past, but in 
the future; that their great hero was not their founder, but 
their founder’s latest and greatest descendant; that their na- 
tional aspirations and hopes gathered round the head not of 
a warrior but of a Prophet-King who was to come, a conqueror, 
indeed, but one whose greatness consisted not in physical 
force and the weapons of whose warfare were not carnal but 
moral and spiritual—mercy, truth, goodness and love. It was 
the prophets in Israel who kept alive the sense of God in the 


mind and conscience of the nation and made it possible for 
361 


362 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


the cherished expectation and coming glory of the nation to 
find expression in a Prophet, greater than all the prophets that 
had preceded him. 


I 


THE ARGUMENT FROM PROPHECY—ITS VALUE 
AND LIMITATIONS 


If the physical world is a medium and channel and instru- 
ment in which and through which God reveals himself to 
men, much more truly and effectively does God reveal himself 
in and through the intellectual world, through the medium of 
the human mind. If we may believe that God in the days of 
Moses wrought “mighty works’ in the physical world and 
thereby manifested forth his presence and power, much more 
truly may we believe that he spoke surely and effectively to 
men in and through the person of Moses, the great prophet 
and law-giver who transformed the children of Israel into 
a nation. If, however, it be claimed, as it is by some, that 
the numerous and notable miracles said to have been wrought 
in Egypt and at Sinai, are exaggerations and misinterpreta- 
tions of natural events on the part of the people, or pure crea- 
tions of the pious imagination on the part of historians of a 
later day, the same cannot be said of the great ideas and 
thoughts and commandments which come to us through the 
mind of Moses, the origin and inspiration of which the great 
prophet attributed to God; for these ideas and thoughts and 
commandments, seeing that they are with us now and speak 
for themselves, reinforce the claim of Moses that they were 
inspired of God. When God speaks in and through the 
prophets, then, we may antecedently expect a higher and finer 
revelation of himself than is possible for him to make in and 
through physical nature, whether it be through the laws of 
nature or in a supernatural manner. The study of the Hebrew 
and Christian prophets, therefore, as interpreters and revealers 
of God, will furnish one of the surest and best of the pathways 
along which pilgrims may journey and find God. 


PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 363 


1. Prophecy Defined 


God has been pleased to reveal his will to men through 
nature; but physical nature is at best but a dim and imperfect 
medium of communication. God reveals himself best to men 
through men—through chosen men to whom in and through 
experience he communicates his will more directly than it is 
possible for him to communicate it to the less spiritual multi- 
tude who need all the more because they are less spiritual to 
know that will. These chosen men to whom God has spoken 
in a special manner that they may speak to others we call 
prophets. They are God’s spokesmen. No prophecy is of 
private interpretation or limitation; it is a message from God 
meant for others than the prophet as well as the prophet him- 
self. It thus appears that prophecy means not simply predic- 
tions of future events, but any and all revelations through 
the prophets of the mind of God to man, whether they con- 
cern the past or the present or the future. In the modern 
use of the argument from prophecy there has been a shifting of 
emphasis similar to that which we found has taken place 
in the use of miracles as a mode of divine revelation. Miracles 
involve an intervention of supernatural power in the natural 
world or the realm of physical law. Prophecy involves an 
intervention of superhuman knowledge in the intellectual 
world; it is a miracle in the realm of mind. It is such an 
intervention of the divine Mind into the realm of human 
thought as imparts to man a knowledge of things either past, 
present, or future which the human mind unaided by such 
special intervention could not attain to. The sacred records 
contain revelations made to Abraham, to Moses, to the great 


_ prophets, to many chosen ones, imparting to them ideas, con- 
ceptions, doctrines, visions of truth and duty, which we have 
_ reason to believe, would never have come into their minds apart 





from such special intercourse with God and revelations from 


him. We need not assume, however, that God used any un- 
_ natural or uncanny methods, any mysterious or magical means 
_ for making these revelations. Whatever a man who knows 


364 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


God in a personal experience learns because of and through ~ 
that experience and contact with God may be called a divine 
revelation. 

Miracles of power and miracles of knowledge are well 
adapted to supplement, confirm and support each other; and 
they stand or fall together as divine credentials. One who 
believes that God has spoken in a special manner to and 
‘through the prophets is prepared to believe in miracles; and 
one who accepts the evidence of miracles is antecedently pre- 
pared to believe that holy men of old spake as they were moved 
by the Holy Ghost. On the other hand, those theological writ- 
ers who discount the miraculous element in the Bible may be 
counted on to discount or deny the supernatural element in 
the prophecies of Scripture. 

We have seen how the transfer of emphasis in one’s concep- 
tion and interpretation of God from transcendence to imma- 
nence affects the interpretation of the miraculous and super- 
natural in the realm of matter. The same cause has brought 
about a change in the modern conception of prophecy—espe- 
cially as concerns the inspiration of the prophets and God’s 
method of revealing his mind and will to them and through 
them to others. 


2. The Inspiration of the Prophets 


If divine inspiration is to be found in any writings coming 
down to us from the ancient world, it is in the messages of 
the Hebrew Prophets found in the Old Testament. He who 
looks for the only proof or the chief proof of the inspiration 
of these ancient seers and prophets in specific, definite and 
detailed predictions of future events may be left more or less 
unsatisfied with the result of his search; but he who studies 
these ancient writings, believing that the utterance of moral 
and spiritual truth possessed of the highest social significance 
and moral value to men, is the best proof a prophet can give 
of his divine inspiration, will not be disappointed. To see 
how large and rich in material of this kind the prophetical 
writings are it is all important that they be read as messages 
to men then living. 


PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 365 


The writings of the prophets are unquestionably the ob- 
scurest and most difficult of interpretation to the modern 
Bible reader of all the books of the sacred canon. The reason - 
for this is not far to seek. They are messages, sermons, dis- 
courses, warnings, exhortations, etc., delivered in forms of 
speech and under conditions and circumstances totally different 
from those now existing, and the understanding of these 
circumstances is absolutely necessary to a proper understanding 
of the messages which they called forth. Some few things 
in the prophetical writings are so simple and transparent as 
to their meaning and so true and beautiful as statements of 
moral and spiritual truth, that they need no interpreter. But 
there is no denying the fact that many parts of the writings of 
the prophets are so obscure that Bible readers of average 
intelligence have but a faint idea, if any at all, as to what 
they mean unless and until they are not only translated but 
interpreted by competent scholars. It is well for us to under- 
stand, therefore, that these writings, these messages and dis- 
courses, were never originally designed as a book of devotion 
for those who live in our day, but were addressed to people 
long since dead, and were called forth by moral conditions 
that have long since passed away. Many pious souls read 
these writings as part of their daily devotions, conscious that 
they do not understand one-fourth of what they read, half 
wondering in their hearts how and why divine inspiration 
could have prepared for devotional reading books so hard to 
be understood. There can surely be no special piety in read- 
ing what is not understood. And yet these writings have 
their devotional value and uses; such portions of them as are 
clearly understood are exceedingly rich in moral lessons. 

Only then by recognising the fact that these prophetic 
messages have immediate reference to the moral and social 
conditions then existing can they be interpreted properly. The 
little kingdoms of Judah and Israel were not only surrounded 
by numerous petty heathen kingdoms with whom they were 
more or less in hostile conflict all the time—and if perchance at 
intervals friendly relations existed, this was a fruitful source 
of even greater moral danger in that the kings and the people 


366 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


were constantly tempted into the gross forms of idolatry 
which those nations practised—but Palestine was the highway 
and battleground between the two great world monarchies that 
occupied respectively the valley of the Euphrates and the valley 
of the Nile, and it was impossible for any people occupying 
this territory to remain neutral. The inspired prophets and his- 
torians saw in the sins of the rulers and the people the moral 
necessity and cause of war and in the hostile attacks of sur- 
rounding nations the providential and divinely inflicted penalty 
for sin. The recognition of this fact is essential to an under- 
standing of their messages. This may not have been to them 
the whole truth concerning sin and war, but it certainly was 
the moral truth which they felt called upon to utter and to 
emphasise. Mingled denunciation and comfort, hope and 
despair, present punishment and purification, and future pardon 
and restoration, existing unrighteous kings and one future 
ideal righteous Messiah-King—these are common themes which 
occupy all the prophets; and yet each prophetic message takes 
its colouring from the more immediate and local conditions 
that called it forth. But it is neither with the history nor 
the exegesis of the prophets that we here and now have 
to do. It is with the prophets as great moral teachers that 
we are concerned, and with their writings as possessing the 
marks of divine inspiration which make them good for all 
time in that they give expression to moral and spiritual truths 
which are as much needed in our day as they were needed 
in the days of the prophets. 


The Hebrew prophets were thus the religious teachers and 
preachers of righteousness under the old dispensation. They 
were forthtellers of the divine will, and not simply foretellers 
of future events. They were spokesmen of Jehovah to his 
people. To draw lessons from the past and to declare the 
mind of Jehovah pertaining to the present in matters of doc- 
trine and duty constituted the largest part of their work as 
inspired teachers and preachers of righteousness; and much of 
what they predict should be interpreted not as an exhibition of 
foreknowledge but as declaring what under existing moral con- 
ditions should and would take place. 


pn 


PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 367 


3. Predictive Prophecy 


Man has large knowledge of the present and has a limited 
knowledge of the past, but he is ignorant of the future. God 
alone has knowledge without any limitation; he alone knows 
fully and perfectly all things that are now, that have been 
in the past, and that will be in the future. A sure and definite 
revelation of the future can come only from the divine Mind. 
Events, therefore, if there be such, that can be shown to have 
been predicted many years before they came to pass—the fore- 
announcement, for example, of the coming of a great leader— 
cannot fail to prove the omniscience of the mind from which 
the predictions emanated. 

While the prediction of future events was only a small 
and occasional part of the prophet’s work, nevertheless doctri- 
nally it was a very important part, and was long regarded as 
relatively so important that it largely appropriated to itself 
the word “prophecy,” which term in the writings of theologians 
of former generations is often used as if it referred exclu- 
sively to the prediction of future events. This limitation of 
the meaning of the word, however, is not warranted by the 
Old Testament, all of whose moral and spiritual teachings 
belong to prophetic literature. While, however, it is important 
that we do not unduly magnify and exaggerate the predictive 
element in prophecy, it is equally important that we_do not 
ignore it or minify it. No one can do this and be a fair 
and faithful interpreter of the Old and New Testaments as 
they are related to each other, and mutually related to Him 
who was at once the greatest subject of predictive prophecy 
and himself the greatest of the prophets. 

The study of prophetic prediction becomes thus, if real pre- 
dictions be found in the Bible, a pathway leading to a knowl- 
edge of God; and this path will be sure and illuminated with 
convincing evidence in proportion to the strength of the con- 
viction that the prophetic utterances under consideration are 
unmistakable revelations and foreannouncements of the provi- 
dential purposes of God as to the future. All rational beings 
have purposes and plans for the future; and the execution 


368 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


of the programme of any human leader as a rule necessitates 
the imparting to his agents of a certain amount of informa- 
tion regarding his plans for the future. If God has, and has 
always had, a great and divine providential programme for 
the future—and he most surely has—in the execution of which 
innumerable human agents are to be employed, and these not 
mere passive instruments, but rational, moral free agents, it 
would be surprising and strange if he did not reveal to these 
co-operative agents some of the things planned for the future. 
If now the study of predictive prophecy be approached from 
this rational point of view it cannot fail to predispose the 
student to regard it as an altogether reasonable feature and 
accompaniment of the divine programme. 

Of nothing were the theologians of a generation ago more 
certain than that prediction and fulfilment were meant to con- 
stitute one of the methods employed by God for authenticat- 
ing divine revelation. This was regarded by them as an alto- 
gether legitimate inference from the language used in various 
passages in the Old and New Testaments. In Isaiah xli. 21-23 
we read: “Produce your cause, saith the Lord, bring forth 
your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob. Let them bring 
them forth, and show us what shall happen: let them show the 
former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and 
know the latter end of them: or declare us things for to come. 
Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know 
that ye are gods.” “I am God, and there is none like me, de- 
claring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the 
things that are not yet done.”’ (Isaiah xlvi.9, 10.) In Deuter- 
onomy xvili. 21, 22 God speaks through Moses thus: “And 
if thou say in thine heart How shall we know the word which 
the Lord hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the 
name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, 
that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken.” John xiv. 
29 records these words of Christ: “And now I have told you 
before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might 
believe.” 

These passages were interpreted by evangelical commenta- 
tors as teaching: (1) That God revealed his will in a special 


PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 369 


manner to the prophets and through them to the world; that 
they were his spokesmen. (2) That the prediction of future 
events constituted not a large but an important part of his 
revelation to them. (3) That great weight was attached to 
the fulfilment of these predicted events as proofs of divine 
revelation, and that this credential was divinely provided for 
the special purpose of convincing men of their relations to 
God and their obligations to him, and of the part which they 
were to take in the carrying out of the Divine purposes and 
plans. That God has purposes and plans for the future is as 
certain as that God exists; and this means that man as well 
as God has a part and place in the carrying out of these plans. 
Predictions, therefore, even though limited and meagre, serve 
to reveal to men that each and every generation of mankind 
is not only the offspring of the past, but coworking with God, 
the, responsible parent of the future. The kingdom of God 
is always a coming kingdom. 

It is maintained by some that this argument, even in its 
strongest Messianic form, is helpful to believers only—that, 
unless other arguments have served to bring an unbeliever into 
spiritual sympathy with Christ and the Scriptures, this argu- 
ment is too vague and lends itself too easily to speculation 
and alternative interpretations to be convincing to unbelievers 
—that it confirms faith but does not remove and convince 
doubt. Thus Pecaut, a noted French sceptic, once said: “We 
sometimes hear preachers cry out, “Let one show us a single 
prophecy not fulfilled and we will descend from this pulpit!’ 
I should be tempted to say to them, ‘I will mount up into 
your place if you will show me one single prediction fulfilled.’ ” 
And Dr. Kuenen, the great Dutch theologian, argues at con- 
siderable length in his work on “The Prophets and Prophecy 
in Israel” to show that the larger part of the Jewish prophecies 
were never fulfilled, and that those that may be said to have 
been fulfilled bear no marks of a supernatural origin. Not 
a little, therefore, we must concede, depends upon the mental 
and moral attitude of the student of prophecy toward the 
supernatural element in Christianity. If one doubts or denies 
that there is any supernatural element in Christianity, we may 


370 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


take it for granted that he will find some method satisfactory 
to himself of explaining away all the so-called predictions 
of the Old Testament. With such persons we will have to 
depend entirely upon the moral element in the prophetic writ- 
ings to furnish us with the material for our argument. This 
moral argument is one the force of which none can successfully 
resist. Nevertheless, he alone is justified in denying or dis- 
crediting predictive prophecy who has made a faithful and 
conscientious study of the Messianic portions of the Old Testa- 
ment Scriptures and compared them with the Christ of the 
New Testament and of subsequent history, and, as a result 
of such study, has become convinced that there are no real 
predictions concerning a coming Messiah in the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures. 


II 
MESSIANIC’ PROPHECY 


It is an oft-quoted saying of Goethe, that if ever the divine 
appeared on earth it was certainly in the person of Jesus 
Christ. We may truly say that if ever Divine foreknowledge 
has found expression in human words and in literature, it is 
found in the utterances recorded in the Old Testament con- 
cerning a coming Messiah. This Hebrew word “Messiah” 
translated into Greek is “Christ,” and into English “the 
anointed One.’’ Prophets, priests and kings were sometimes 
if not always anointed to their offices by the use of oil, which 
was the physical symbol of the more important spiritual anoint- 
ing without which the duties of no office in the theocracy could 
be properly discharged. Whatever else this coming leader of 
the Hebrews might be or might not be, he was to be as his name 
implied, the divinely anointed One. 


1. Christ the Fulfilment of Messianic Prophecy 


There is nothing surer in the Old Testament than the pres- 
ence there of a long series of prophetic utterances concerning 
a coming royal person who came to be designated as the 
Messiah. These predictions as interpreted by the New Testa- 











PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 371 


ment writers include such matters as his birth of a virgin 
mother and of the seed of Abraham and Judah and David; 
the place of his birth and the time of his coming; that he 
should fulfil the office of a prophet, a priest, and a king; that 
he should suffer, be put to death, and rise again; that his mis- 
sion should be to the Gentiles as well as to the Jews; and that 
he should be the world’s Saviour and establish a kingdom of 
righteousness of which there should be no end. There is 
scarcely anything of far-reaching importance in the life of 
Christ that was not made a subject of prophetic prediction. 
It is impossible to explain the correspondence between these 
predictions and the actual history on the principle of either an 
accidental coincidence or a fraud. Had the foreannounce- 
ments been confined to the events of a commonplace life, or had 
they been, taken in their entirety, obscure, ambiguous, or enig- 
matical, they might be attributed to ingenious surmising; but 
when they constitute a chain of extraordinary and unique 
events and traits of character interwoven with that which is 
commonplace and natural; it may be confidently declared that 
no imagination of man could ever have created such a dream. 
Or, supposing that it could, how could the extraordinary 
dream have ever become real in an actual historical person? 

The Christian Church has always believed and taught that 
holy men of old had revealed to them by the Omniscient Be- 
ing the marvellous things which they declared concerning the 
coming Messiah, and that his fulfilment of these marvellous 
predictions established his divine Messiahship. The corre- , 
spondence between the composite portrait of the Messiah of 
the Old Testament, as drawn by no less than twenty-five dif- 
ferent prophets, and the Christ of the New Testament, is so 
striking and remarkable that it constitutes, no matter how it 
may be explained, one of the most remarkable things in the 
entire range of religious literature. Surely we have here, 
if we have anywhere in human history, a revelation from the 
divine Mind. Is it possible that twenty-five different sculptors, 
living to some extent in different countries and in different 
centuries, with no understanding whatever with each other, 
could each hew out of the quarry a block of marble, and then, 


372 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


when the last one had been dead four hundred years, that 
some one, gathering together these separate blocks, should 
find that they fitted together so as to make a perfect statue of 
a man—and of a man then living—so that every one who knew 
the living person would recognise the resemblance at once? 
Is such a thing conceivable? And if it should be actual, 
would it not be a miracle in marble and prove that the divine 
Mind had guided each separate sculptor in his work? Just 
so surely must we say that the divine Mind has guided those 
whose pens have drawn these various lines of Old Testament 
prophecy which, when brought together, make a perfect por- 
trait of one who is instantly recognised as the Christ of the 
New Testament. How can one read the Messianic predictions 
of the Old Testament and find them all realised in the Christ 
of the New Testament and not believe that there is a God 
whose plans and purposes for the future are based on a knowl- 
edge that is infinite? And why should it be thought a thing 
incredible that the coming of One who proves to be, when 
he is come, “the desire of all nations,’ should be fore- 
announced ? * 

One does not have to believe in all that traditional theology 
has claimed for the “argument from prophecy,’ or shut his 
eyes to unmistakable “accommodations” on the part of New 
Testament writers (and that there are such is most evident), 
in order to feel convinced that after all due allowance has been 
made for all exaggerated claims and for all “accommodations,” 
there is a safe and trustworthy residuum of unmistakable fore- 
announcements of the coming of One who could not be any 
other than Jesus Christ.’ 


1 See chapter on “The Spirit of Christ in the Old Testament” in George 
Adam Smith’s “Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the Old Testa- 
ment.” 

2 The reader who cares to study in detail the passages in the Old Testa- 
ment interpreted as Messianic in connection with New Testament references 
as to their fulfilment will find the following groups helpful. They are 
arranged according to subjects. No one who examines them carefully can 
fail to see why it is that predictive and Messianic prophecy has been the 
source of much speculation—why one man finds in its multitudinous “accom- 
modations” an impediment to faith while it appeals profoundly to another as 
a sure and shining pathway to God. 

(1) Gen. iii. 15; Rom. xvi. 20. (2) Gen. xxii. 18; xvii. 21; xxviii. 14; 


PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 373 


We confine our study of predictive prophecy to passages 
of the Old Testament which concern themselves with fore- 
announcements concerning the promised Messiah. There are 
many passages found in the Old Testament which are in- 
terpreted as predictions concerning the Jews and other nations 
which furnish interesting material for study, but it is beyond 
our province to give any consideration to these. The same 
is true to an even greater degree of those passages found in 
Daniel and the Apocalypse, and other books of the Old and 
New Testaments, which are the occasion of endless discus- 
sions concerning the second coming of Christ and the end 
of the world. Not all perhaps will agree with me in declaring 
that the truth of predictive prophecy as a whole stands or 
falls with the truth of Messianic prophecy. Frederick the 
Great once demanded of his royal chaplain what was the 
strongest single argument that could be adduced to prove the 
divine inspiration and truth of the Scriptures. “The Jews, 
your majesty, the Jews!’ was his prompt reply. And we doubt 
not that not a few “pre-millenarians’ could be found who 
would say that in confining our studies to Christ’s first com- 
ing, we are omitting the most luminous of all proofs from 
prophecy that God has spoken to men when we omit all ref- 
erence to passages in which they find so much that is edifying 


xlix. 8-10; 1 Chron. v. 1-2; Is. xi. 1-10; Ps, Ixxxix. 3, 4; Jer. xxiil. 55 
Ps. ii. 7; compare with Rom. reeds Vil. 14; Rev. v. 5; Acts xiii. 23; Gal. iit 
16. (3) Gen. xlix. 10; Dan. ii. 44; ix. 24, 25; compare with well- known 
facts of history. (4) Mal. ii. 1; iv. 531s; xls e.compare with) Luke 1.176; 
Matt. iii. I-3; xvii. 10-12. (5) Micah v. 2; compare with John vii. 42; 
Matt. ii. 1-6. (6) Is. vii. 14; compare with Matt. i. 22, 23; Luke i. 26-35. 
(7) Deut. xvili. 15; compare with Acts, Chap. 11; Matt. viii. 28; John iv. 
25, 26; John vi. 14. (8) Ps. cx. 4; Zech. vi. 12; compare with Heb. v. 5, 6; 
Ril 2A 2500 (Oy Sei xs, 0; Wi; Jer cits aor Dan. il. 445 Viti Tt, 18; 
compare with Luke ii. 11; i. 30-33 5 Mark i. 14; Luke xvii. 20, 21; Rom. Xi. 
Bieri Coriaxy, 253 Rev. RiTS. ClO) Is exit 10% sclixs0. xiii. I-14; 
compare with Luke ii. 30- 32; Acts xxviii. 28; x. 45, 46: Matt. xii. 17-21. 
fir) Zech. ix. 03s. cxvill. 26; compare with Matt. xx. 1-5; Luke xix. 
37,1 38-|) (12) Zech. x1. 5 2,), 13°; Ps. xli. 9; lix. 25; cix. 8; compare with 
Matt. xxvi. 14, 15; xxvii. 9, 10; John xiii. 18; Acts i. 16-20. (a3). Zech: 
xi. 10;:)Ps. xxii. I- 18 ; Ixix. 21: Ex. xii. 46; Ps. xxxiv. 20; TeiAliinn oO; 
compare with John xix. 33-37; Rev. ay de Matt. xxvii. 33-48; Luke xxiii. 
33-35; John xix. 23, 24; Matt. xxvii. 57- -60. (14) Is. litt. 5-8; Dan. ix. 26; 
compare with 1 Cor. xv. 3; 2 Cor. v. 21; Heb. ix. 28; 1 Pet. it. 24; Gal. iit. 
Paver eponiiiit, 53,1 bet. 111. 183).1: John i207 C15) Ps. xvi. 9, 10; compare 
with Acts ii. 30, 31; xiii. 32-35. 


374 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


concerning Christ’s second coming. But in spite of the pres- 
ence in the Old Testament of certain remarkable predictive 
warnings given the Jews of old as to the consequences of sin 
and disobedience, and the fulfilment of these predictive warn- 
ings in the subsequent history of the scattered nation that 
became a byword and hissing in many lands, and in spite of 
numerous references in the New Testament to the second com- 
ing of Christ, we are content to let the question of predictive 
prophecy rest with the truth of Messianic prophecy. If the 
Messiah of the Old Testament and the Christ of the New 
Testament are not one and the same person, there is no pre- 
dictive prophecy anywhere; if they are one and the same 
person, not only is predictive prophecy an established fact but 
it becomes one of the most luminous of all the pathways that 
lead to God—to faith in God as “the Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ’? and as the Father of those whom Christ has 
made to be sons of God. 


2. Different Interpretations of Messianic Passages 


Commentators differ very widely in their interpretation of 
the so-called Messianic passages found in the Old Testament. 
Some of them have written as if their effort was to place 
a Messianic interpretation on every passage that could pos- 
sibly bear it, as if it were a mark of superior spiritual dis- 
cernment and a sign of marked exegetical skill to find refer- 
ences to the Messiah in almost every page of the Old Testa- 
ment, and especially in places where the average reader would 
not discover it. This has done much to bring the “argument 
from prophecy” into disrepute. At the opposite extreme from 
this method of interpretation is that of Hugo Grotius, the great 
Arminian jurist and commentator of Holland, whose general 
position was: never introduce the supernatural where the nat- 
ural could account for things; never place a predictive and 
Messianic interpretation upon a passage that can be explained 
with reasonable probability as referring to an event or person 
near at hand; never find a supernatural prediction except where 
you are compelled to do so in order to give a reasonable ex- 
planation of the statements made. It is possible for one to 


PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 375 


sympathise thoroughly with this position of Grotius, and yet 
differ widely from him in applying the principle involved; for 
he found so little of the supernatural in the Old Testament 
that he is ranked by many as anti-evangelical and rationalistic 
in his interpretation of the Bible. Many feel compelled to in- 
troduce the supernatural, and find, or think they find, unmis- 
takable predictions of the Messiah where Grotius found no 
such references himself. 

In Edersheim’s “Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah,” 
there is a list of no less than four hundred and fifty-six pas- 
sages found in the Old Testament which have been interpreted 
as of Messianic significance. This may represent one extreme, 
while the naturalistic school of interpreters represent the other 
extreme and exclude all distinct and specific predictions of the 
Messiah from the Old Testament. Between these two ex- 
tremes modern Bible scholars have found a method of media- 
tion. 

The three methods of studying and interpreting Messianic 
prophecy may be called the naturalistic, the theological and 
the historical. The first of these denies that there is anything 
supernatural in prophecy; the Old Testament contains no pre- 
dictions. There are foreshadowings and forecastings of some 
future events, such as can be made by moral students of the 
times, but nothing that is beyond man’s natural abilities to 
forecast. And the so-called “‘fulfilments” are, one and all, 
nothing more than an accommodation of the language of the 
prophets to later events. The utterances that are called Mes- 
sianic predictions are all explained as referring exclusively to 
events near at hand, or else as being of such a general nature 
that they can be made to refer to other persons or events 
with as much propriety as to Christ and the events pertaining 
to his Kingdom. The second method of interpreting prophecy 
is at the other extreme from the first; it emphasises the super- 
natural element, and regards the predictions of a coming Mes- 
siah in connection with their fulfilment as one of the strongest 
credentials provided by God to establish the Messiahship of 
Christ, and appeals to the fact that it is so used in the New 
Testament. The third method mediates between these two. 


376 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


As against the first it recognises a supernatural as well as a 
human element in prophecy, but as compared with the second 
it makes relatively more of the human element in prophecy 
and less of the divine than the second does, and finds in the 
varied and conflicting interpretations of predictive prophecy 
that have characterised the history of the Church a proof of 
ambiguity that warns against attaching too strong apologetic 
value to this argument. The last two are both held by 
eminent theologians of the Church and represent respectively 
the older and the more modern method of treating the subject 
of prophecy. 


The historical method of studying and interpreting prophecy 
adopted by modern Bible scholars, approaching the subject en- — 


tirely from the Old Testament itself, studies it as a growth in 
the light of history, regards each and every book of prophecy 
as, first of all, a message of the prophet to his own times, 
and hence magnifies the moral and spiritual element, and 
finds its chief significance in the immediate moral purpose 
which it served in rebuking sin and enforcing righteousness. 
Even when the prophet is talking of the future, he is de- 
scribing not so much what certainly shall be as what ought 


to be, and what, under proper moral conditions, will be. It — 


is plain to see that this method of treating prophecy makes 


more of the human and relatively less of the supernatural ele- © 
ment in it; makes more of it as a present moral message and © 
less as a prediction of the future. It studies and interprets 
each prophetic message in the light of the context and the — 
historical conditions that called it forth, rather than in the © 
light of any use made of it in the New Testament. It allies — 
itself most readily with that theory of inspiration which admits — 
the possibility of historical, chronological, scientific, and other — 
errors of like nature in the Bible, and which magnifies the | 


moral and the spiritual truth in the Bible as that which alone 
is of transcendent importance. Much of what is called Mes- 


sianic, though finding its highest fulfilment in Christ, is re-— 


garded as capable of application to other characters before 
Christ, to other servants of Jehovah, prophets, priests, and 
kings, and to the Jewish nation as a whole. 


PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 377 


This theory does not discard predictive prophecy, but, as 
compared with the traditional method of interpreting and using 
prophecy, it regards the element of prediction as of such a 
nature as to make it unwise to rely upon it as an argument of 
great value for our day. The varied and conflicting interpre- 
tations of predictive prophecy that have characterised different 
groups of believers in all periods of church history are a proof 
of its ambiguity and are regarded as a warning against staking 
the truth of the Christian religion on any argument based on 
predictive prophecy. 

While there are in the Old Testament many prophetic ref- 
erences to an ideal coming Messiah and to a suffering servant 
of Jehovah which apply in a remarkable way to Christ, it is 
felt by those who adopt this method of interpreting prophecy 
that the ethical and spiritual teachings of the prophets and of 
Christ furnish an argument so free from ambiguity and so 
irresistible in its appeal to all reasonable minds that the entire 
emphasis in the “argument from prophecy” for our day should 
be placed at this point. All that is of higher moral and spiritual 
value in prophecy culminates, finds its perfect “fulfilment,” in 
Christ, the greatest of the prophets, whose highest prophetic 
credentials are not to be found in his predictions of future 
events but in the moral and spiritual truths that he uttered. 
The “argument from prophecy” that places its whole emphasis 
here will never need to be remanded to the background of 
Apologetics in any generation. It is because the emphasis has 
not been placed here that there has come in our day a reaction 
against the argument that bears this designation. 


3. Reaction Against the Argument from Predictive Prophecy 


In spite of the reasonableness of a certain amount of in- 
formation concerning the future being imparted by God to 
those who are to be the agents in the carrying out of his pro- 
gramme—and in spite of the fact that there are numerous 
statements in the Old and New Testaments which are con- 
nected with each other as prediction and fulfilment—there have 
been such disputations and differences of opinion when it comes 
to the interpretation of these predictive passages that the re- 


378 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


sult has been that the argument from predictive prophecy has 
lost its former high standing among the evidences of Chris- 
tianity, and has largely disappeared from modern treatises 
on Christian apologetics. Some, on the other hand, have gone 
so far as to claim that the predictions of Scripture are not only 
clear and definite and possessed of the highest evidential value, 
but that they constitute a sort of map for the discovery and 
location of all the great leading events of history, particularly 
those foreshadowing the second coming of Christ. Among the 
causes which have brought about the reaction against the argu- 
ment from prophecy this exaggerated claim for, and excessive 
confidence in, Biblical predictions, has perhaps been most in- 
fluential. And, next to that, is a tendency manifest among 
modern Bible scholars to extend the principle of “accommo- — 
dation” to a larger number of New Testament references to 
Old Testament Scriptures than had hitherto been considered 
legitimate. 

Concerning the second coming of Christ, which many of 
the early Christians erroneously thought would take place in 
their lifetime, there have been three interpretations among 
Christians who are equally devout and equally anxious rightly 
to interpret the mind of the Spirit as revealed in the Scrip- 
tures. Premillenarians believe that Christ will return in vis- 
ible bodily form and, binding Satan in chains, will establish 
here on the earth a visible kingdom out of the entire body of 
resurrected saints, over which he will reign a thousand years. 
They interpret as definite, exact, and literal many references 
to Christ’s second advent which post-millenarians interpret 
figuratively and metaphorically. These latter believe that the 
millennium will precede Christ’s second coming, and consist 
of a long extended period of progress and prosperity, at the 
termination of which Christ will come in visible bodily form 
and that his coming will be the signal for the resurrection of 
the dead which will be followed by the general and final judg- © 
ment of all men. Between these two views the Church has 
been long divided. And then there is a large and constantly 
increasing number of Christians in the present day who do 
not believe that there will be any definite visible bodily return 


PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 379 


of Christ; nor do they believe that there will be any resurrec- 
tion of the dead bodies of men nor any general judgment of 
men other than that which takes place when each man dies 
and presents himself in the spirit before the judgment seat of 
Christ to give an account of the deeds done in the body. It 
is no part of our purpose to give the reasons for or against 
any one of these views. We only mention them to show how 
and why it is that predictive prophecy as a pathway to God 
is beclouded by doubts as to its real meaning and does not 
seem to appeal to the modern mind as it did to men of a 
former generation. But we feel confident that if any one 
familiar with the life of Christ will read all the Old Testament 
passages concerning the promised and expected Messiah, and 
compare them with the Christ who has come, he cannot fail 
to be convinced that the Old Testament contains divine fore- 
announcements of the coming of the divine-human Christ. 


4. “Accommodations” of Prophetic Language Distinguished 
, from Fulfilments 


The most common and expressive formula with which Mes- 
sianic quotations from the Old Testament are introduced in 
the New is, “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by 
the prophet, saying, etc.’”’ This phrase is sometimes applied 
to passages in the Old Testament which cannot be regarded 
as predictions, and the New Testament “application” cannot be 
called a “fulfilment” in the ordinary sense of that term. This 
free use of the term shows that any accommodation or ap- 
propriation of an Old Testament passage to a New Testament 
use was called a “fulfilment.” J. S. Palfrey in his book on 
“The Relation Between Judaism and Christianity,’ published 
many years ago, endeavours to prove by numerous citations 
from classic, Syriac, and Jewish authors that the common 
practice of writers at that time was to call that a “fulfilment” 
which was regarded as nothing more than an illustration or 
application. He takes the position that the New Testament 
writers generally quote the Old Testament passages not so 
much as predictions of Christ and Christianity as statements 
of truth which receive new illustrations and applications in 


380 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Christianity. While this may be true of many individual — 


passages cited it does not seem altogether satisfactory thus 


to explain numerous other passages which seem to be un- — 
questionably predictions of definite New Testament events ful- — 


filled in the life of the Son of Man. 


We cite here three instances of accommodation to show 
how the New Testament writers appropriate or apply to their — 


uses the language of the Old Testament in so far as it suggests 
itself to them as appropriate and expressive of their ideas or 
of the facts they narrate; just as we now use the Bible as a 
thesaurus from which to draw expressive phrases to represent 
our ideas or feelings, or to describe current events, and this 





oe 


without much regard to the original context or the circum- © 
stances that called forth the words quoted. The difference © 
is they called it a “fulfilment” of the ancient words while we — 
would not use that term in referring to the Biblical words — 
quoted. As an example of “accommodation” we may refer — 
to Psalm Ixxviii. 2, “I will open my mouth in a parable: © 


I will utter dark sayings of old.” In Matthew xiii. 35, it is 
said that Jesus employed parables in teaching in order that 
these words spoken by the prophet might be “fulfilled.” Again, 


in Jeremiah xxxi. 15, there is an allusion to Rachel weeping — 


for her children and refusing to be comforted. In Matthew ii. 
17, it is said that this prophecy was “fulfilled” in the weeping 
that took place after Herod’s murder of the innocents. In 
Hosea x1. 1, are the words: “Out of Egypt have I called my 
son.” In Matthew ii. 15, it is said that the infant Jesus 
abode in Egypt in order that this prophetic word might be 
“fulfilled.” But there is no evidence that the prophet had this 
event of the Gospel history in mind, or that the prophetic 
passage was in any way intended to refer to it. There is no 
way to explain this peculiar use of Old Testament Scripture 
for New Testament purposes that is more satisfactory than 
to regard it as an accommodation of words called forth by 


certain circumstances or events to other circumstances or events — 
which were not at all in the mind of the speaker or writer who — 


first used them. 
Our belief that certain Old Testament statements and later 


a i ” ——_-* 


PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 381 


events sustain the relation of prediction and fulfilment to 
each other is not based on the fact that such relation is rec- 
ognised in the New Testament—though there are some who 
affirm that this is the case and take the position that only 
that portion of the Old Testament is Messianic which is dis- 
tinctly affirmed to be such in the New Testament. On the 
contrary it can be well maintained that if no New Testament 
writers had ever compared the life of Christ as revealed in 
the New Testament history with the Old Testament prophecies 
to see whether or not there were predictions and fulfilments— 
if the discovery and setting forth of these marvellous cor- 
respondences between the Christ of History and the Messiah 
of the Old Testament had been made in our own day for the 
first time—they would be “fulfilments” just as truly as they 
were.in the first century when Christ and the apostles first 
called attention to them. Unless a given statement as made 
in the Old Testament was when originally uttered a real pre- 
diction, no later New Testament use of that statement can 
possibly turn it into a prediction. 

While it is true that it is the person or event foreknown 
which is the cause of the foreknowledge and of the prediction, 
and not the foreknowledge and prediction the cause of the 
person or event coming into existence, there are some instances 
in which the words, “This was done that it might be fulfilled 
which was spoken by the prophet saying’”’ would seem to imply 
that in a sense the prediction was the cause of the event— 
as if Christ had taken the Old Testament prophecy as a kind 
of map or guide or programme of his life, and that his main 
reason for doing these various things recorded was because 
it had been foreannounced, or had been previously ordered by 
the heavenly oracles that such and such things should be done 
by him who should come to fill the office of Messiah—as if 
he were doing his utmost to make himself fit the ideal char- 
acter which he had found described in the ancient sacred books 
of his people, and this for the purpose of securing their recog- 
nition of him as Messiah. But it is impossible to reconcile 
such an explanation of these words with any worthy con- 
ception of the moral character of Christ, not to speak of his 


382 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


divinity. We therefore conclude that the formula, “That it 
might be fulfilled,” is one that simply calls attention to a cer- 
tain correspondence and agreement between what Christ said 
or did and the passage cited in the Old Testament. As to 
whether the agreement recognised by the New Testament writer 
is one simply of accommodation, or a special application of 
general truth, or a literal fulfilment of a divine prediction, that 
is a point which can be determined only by carefully examining 
the passage quoted in the light of its context and the historical 
circumstances that called it forth. 

The question with us here and now, however, is not, how 
much or how little of the Old Testament has specific reference 
to Jesus as the Messiah, but rather, are there real and specific 
predictions of the Messiah anywhere to be found in the Old 
Testament. Even one such sure prediction would prove the 
presence of a supernatural element in the Old Testament. But 
there are, in the judgment of the great body of Bible readers 
and students of all ages, not one simply, but many references 
to a coming Messiah scattered throughout the Old Testament. 
Among the four hundred and fifty-six Messianic passages 
enumerated by Edersheim, seventy-five are found in the Penta- 
teuch, two hundred and forty-three in the Prophets, and one 
hundred and thirty-eight in the Hagiographa. But if even one 
per cent of this number can bear the tests of fair-minded 
criticism, and be adjudged as genuine Messianic predictions, 
then the divine inspiration of Old Testament prophecy is 
securely established and the New Testament Christ is most 
unmistakably foreshadowed in the Old. 

Dr. James Martineau, the most distinguished of modern 
English Unitarian divines, has declared that the apostles, in 
applying to their Master the epithet of Messiah, did so in error, 
and thus started a false theory as to his person, and in so doing 
they put upon him “the first deforming mask, the first robe 
of hopeless disguise under which the real personality of Jesus 
of Nazareth disappeared from sight,’ and that when the New 
Testament writers applied to him so-called “Messianic pas- 
sages” of the Old Testament they ‘degraded the sublimest re- 
ligious literature of the ancient world into a book of magic 


PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 383 


and a tissue of riddles.” * Unitarians conceive it to be their 
sacred duty and high mission to remove this “deforming 
mask,” this “robe of disguise,’ and make the real and true 
Jesus of Nazareth to live and speak again in the modern 
world. Of course, as Dr. Bruce remarks, this view will be 
endorsed only by those who regard the Messianic hope of 
Israel as a “fond delusion and romantic dream.” He further- 
more says very truly that if, after the disciples came to re- 
gard their Master as the Christ, they discovered, or thought 
they discovered, here and there, correspondences between facts 
in his life and certain prophetic texts, they should take delight 
in pointing these out, they would be doing, to say the least, 
only what was very natural and altogether innocent.” We 
certainly find it in our day not only natural and innocent but 
altogether edifying to discover and proclaim correspondences 
between present-day men and things, and various utterances 
found in the Old and New Testament Scriptures. Nor does 
the admission that many of these “correspondences” between 
the Christ of the New Testament and the Old Testament pas- 
sages cited are mere “accommodations” mean that there are 
not, over and above the Scriptures so used, other definite fore- 
announcements of a coming Messiah that found their real and 
true fulfilment in Christ, 


a 


THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE AND VALUE OF 
PROPHECY 


Suppose it could be shown that there are no real and truly 
definite predictions in the writings of the Hebrew prophets, 
would it follow that there is no evidence left that God has 
spoken to and through the prophets, and that the “argument 
from prophecy” must be dropped from apologetics? By no 
means. An argument at once potent and of permanent value 
remains. 

Matthew Arnold, although a man of letters rather than a 


1“Seat of Authority in Religion,” p. 329. 
2“Apologetics,” p. 360. 


384 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


theologian, and a freethinker rather than an evangelical be- 
liever, was a profound student of the Bible, and no portion of 
the Bible did he more earnestly study and ardently admire 
than the writings of the Old Testament prophets, notably 
Isaiah. His definition of the God of the Bible naturally led 
to his placing “a passion for righteousness” first among the 
notable attributes of the Old Testament prophets: “The God 
of the Bible and of Christianity is the Eternal, not ourselves, 
that makes for righteousness.” But “the Eternal that makes 
for righteousness” must needs do his work in time through 
men chosen for the purpose. These men we call prophets, 
preachers of righteousness, and their most notable character- 
istic is, or ought to be, a passion for righteousness. We wish 
to inquire into the significance of this dominant attribute of 
the prophets, this “passion for righteousness” that so mightily 
moved them, and also into two other attributes that are closely 
associated with it—viz., their optimism and their universalism. 
If we are to find in the study of the Hebrew prophets a path 
that will lead men to God in our day and be darkened by no 
differences of opinion as to its value, it will be by noting in 
their writings the many passages that burn with a passion for 
righteousness, that glow with an optimism that cannot be 
quenched, and with a catholicity and universalism that reveals 
Jehovah as the God not of the Jews only but of the whole 
earth. 


1. The Prophetic Passion for Righteousness 


The passion for righteousness which characterised the He- 
brew prophets throughout the whole Old Testament dispensa- 
tion is perhaps their most unfailing divine credential. It was, 
as it were, a divine fire forever burning in their souls, a holy 
zeal that consumed but did not destroy them. It manifested 
itself in denunciations against prevailing corruptions and 
against the many sins that so easily and continually beset the 
chosen people, and also in dire warnings of the terrible con- 
sequences that would follow both to the individual and the 
nation if these sins were persisted in. Their passionate and 
pathetic pleadings with their people to give up their wicked 


PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 385 


ways and walk in the ways of Jehovah and keep his command- 
ments, which were always proclaimed as righteous both in what 
was prohibited and in what was enjoined; their scathing re- 
bukes whenever, in spite of prophetic entreaties and promises, 
the people plunged into new forms of vice with a high hand 
and an outstretched arm; the moral heroism with which they 
delivered their messages just as they received them from 
Jehovah, without fear or favour, even though like Jeremiah 
they were cast into the miry dungeon; their intense moral 
earnestness, their utter self-forgetfulness in the presence of 
danger and death, their unflinching fidelity in the execution of 
their divine commissions, their unwavering faith in the moral 
order of the world, and their uniform vindication of Jehovah's 
holiness and righteousness—that is what we mean by the pro- 
phetic passion for righteousness. 

Take, for example, these passionate words found in the first 
chapter of Isaiah, and which are in a sense representative of 
the entire series of prophetic discourses which bear the name 
of this greatest of the prophets: 

“Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord hath 
spoken; I have nourished and brought up children, and they 
have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and 
the ass his master’s crib; but Israel doth not know, my people 
doth not consider. Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with 
iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters; they 
have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One 
of Israel unto anger. . . . Wash you, make you clean; put 
away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to 
do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, 
judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let 
us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as 
scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red 
like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedi- 
ent, ye shall eat the good of the land: but if ye refuse and 
rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of 
the Lord hath spoken it.” 


Take, again, these pathetic words from Jeremiah, which re- 


veal not only his passion for righteousness, but the divine 
source of his moral heroism: ! 


386 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


“Thou therefore gird up thy loins, and arise, and speak 
unto them all that I command thee: be not dismayed at their 
faces, lest I confound thee before them. . . . They shall fight 
against thee; but they shall not prevail against thee; for I am 
with thee, saith the Lord, to deliver thee. . . . Be astonished, 
O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very deso- 
late, saith the Lord. For my people have committed two evils; 
they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and 
hewed them out cisterns, that can hold no water. . . . Hear, 
O earth: behold, I will bring evil upon this people, even the 
fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened to 
my words, nor to my law, but rejected it. . . . But if ye will 
not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride; 
and mine eyes shall weep sore, and run down with tears, be- 
cause the Lord’s flock is carried away captive. . . . Woe unto 
him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his cham- 
bers by wrong; that useth his neighbour’s service without 
wages, and giveth him not for his work.” * 


These are but sparks of the fiery passion for righteousness 
that burned in the bosoms of the prophets of old; and it was 
generally while mightily moved with this holy passion that 
prophecies of a Messianic age and kingdom were uttered by 
them, 


2. Prophetic and Priestly Ideals of Righteousness 
Distinguished 


One of the most striking phases of this prophetic passion 
for righteousness was the strong emphasis they placed upon 
personal purity and righteousness and obedience to the com- 
mandments of God as compared with mere sacrificial and 
ceremonial righteousness. Here we have the prophetic and 
priestly types of piety contrasted. The priests were concerned 
about the ritual and its proper performance. They were, as 
compared with the prophets, poor revealers of God to men. 
The prophets recognised the place of sacrifice and ceremony 
in religion; but when these things were unduly stressed in 


1See Sir George Adam Smith’s “Jeremiah,” Chapter VIII on “God, Man 
and the New Covenant.” 


PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 387 


the religious life of the people, it was for the prophets with 
their passion for personal righteousness to utter their warnings 
‘and denunciations. It was such conditions as these that called 
_ forth from Jeremiah the memorable words: “To what purpose 
cometh there to me incense from Sheba, and the sweet cane 
from a far country? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, 
nor your sacrifice sweet unto me.” Similarly Isaiah: “To 
what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith 
the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat 
of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of 
lambs, or of he-goats. When ye come to appear before me, 
who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? 
Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto 
me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I 
cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. 
Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; 
they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.” “I 
desired mercy,” says Hosea, “‘and not sacrifice; and the knowl- 
edge of God more than burnt offerings’; and the same thought 
is in Amos: “I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not 
smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer me burnt 
offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them; 
neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts.” 

These were the conditions that called forth the great prophets 
and created within them their passion for righteousness. The 
priests with their intense zeal for ceremonial righteousness 
and sacrificial forms could never have met these conditions. 
It was these moral crises in Israel’s history that called forth 
from the prophets predictions concerning the coming Messianic 
dispensation that should forever abolish the priesthood and give 
a place of permanent subordination to ceremonial righteous- 
ness and exalt spiritual religion and personal righteousness to 
that place of prominence which it now holds in the ethical 
religion of Christ. The prophetic office is, in many of its 
most important aspects, continued in the New Testament dis- 
pensation, and every true preacher must now, as in former 
times, have a passion for righteousness burning in his bosom 
like a holy fire which when once kindled never goes out while 


388 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


life lasts—that fire which, when once kindled in a man, en- 
ables him to kindle fire in others. Writings which glow with 
this holy passion for righteousness, as do the writings of the 
Old Testament prophets, need no higher or stronger proof of 
their inspiration. 


3. Prophetic Optimism 


Not only did the Hebrew prophets have a passion for right- 
eousness, but they were intensely optimistic. They believed 
in a better day coming. It would have been natural for men 
whose eyes were so quick to discern vice and corruption, and 
who saw so much of idolatry and impurity and oppression, 
to grow pessimistic; but their hope and faith in the future 
were as strong as their zeal for righteousness in the midst of 
a wicked and perverse generation. No matter how dark and 
gloomy the present and the immediate future might be, the 
prophetic eyes penetrated into the more distant future and 
saw righteousness triumphing over sin, and with the return 
of righteousness there would come peace, prosperity, and en- 
largement. No threnody of poet or lamentation of prophet was 
ever so mournful that it was not lighted up somewhere by a 
gracious ray of hope. And that hope was always connected 
with a coming Messiah. At his coming God would enter into 
a new covenant with his people, when his laws that had so 
long been enforced from without would be written in their 
hearts. But for this optimism their hearts would utterly 
have failed them. Many an awful crisis in moral corruption 
and political degeneracy did Israel pass through when the 
nation would have become extinct but for that prophetic 
optimism which saw a coming Messiah and sung its sweet 
song of hope: “It is better farther on.”’ The prophet whose 
passion for righteousness is divine in its origin will always 
be inspired by a heaven-born optimism. A pessimist can never 
lead men to God or reveal God to men. 


4. Prophetic Unwersalism 


Another notable characteristic of the Hebrew prophets was 
their universalism, their recognition of the fact that the moral 


PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 389 


and spiritual blessings that pertained to them were designed 
ultimately for all mankind. The Jews as a race were religiously 
narrow and selfish, bigoted and exclusive; but not so their 
religious leaders, the prophets. These seers saw farther than 
the people did and more than the people did. They recognised 
that Israel’s election was not simply to national blessings and 
privileges, but first of all to service; that the nation’s true 
and high vocation was to carry the knowledge of the one 
true spiritual God and his ethical laws to all the nations of 
the earth. The prophets saw, however, that another dispensa- 
tion must come before that high calling could be realised; 
and so here again it was the coming Messiah who should 
lead the nation forth upon its larger world-wide mission of 
blessing to the whole race of men. The word that Isaiah the 
son'of Amoz saw was also seen by Micah and other prophets: 
“It shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain 
of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the 
mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations 
shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come 
ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house 
of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us of his ways, and 
we will walk in his paths; for out of Zion shall go forth the 
law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he 
shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; 
and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their 
spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword 
against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. O house 
of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.” 
This universalism of the ancient Hebrew prophets, no less 
than their optimism was always connected in their minds 
in its ultimate realisation, with a coming ideal person who 
should be at once a prophet, priest, and king—the Messiah. 
The prophet who has a message for all times must not only 
be possessed of an intense passion for righteousness, but must 
be an optimist and universalist, must feel that a better day 
is coming, and not to him and his nation only but to all man- 
kind. And no man thinks and feels and talks that way unless 
God is in him and speaking through him. 


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CHAPTER FIFTEEN 


THROUGH CHRIST TO GOD 


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THROUGH CHRIST TO GOD 


“Through nature to God,” “through man to God,” and 
“through Christ to God” are three ascending steps in the lad- 
der by which we climb to the perfect vision of God. Although 
we can see more of God in man than we can in physical nature, 
and more of God in Christ than we can in either physical na- 
ture or human nature, itis well for us to remember that Christ, 
the most perfect of men, who as the divine-human one dwelt 
in ‘the very presence of God, communed with the Father in 
and through nature, and made it the vehicle for teaching many 
of the most beautiful truths ever taught mankind concerning 
spiritual religion. His nature parables are full of God; and 
not least among the services he rendered to men in revealing 
God to them was to show them how truly nature reveals the 
wisdom and goodness and love of the Heavenly Father. It was 
from him pre-eminently that we learned to look “through 
nature to God.” 

In like manner we need to remember that it is from Christ 
more than from any other source that we have learned of the 
dignity and nobility of man’s nature. It is from Christ that 
we learned more than from any other source that it is not the 
accident of wealth or social rank or political power or family 
name or any such thing that gives man his dignity and nobility. 
The humblest and poorest of men were just as worthy of con- 
sideration in his esteem as those whom the world counted 
great. In each and every man he saw a child of the heavenly 
Father. And when he took man’s nature upon himself and 
incarnated his very Deity in our humanity in order to reveal 
God to men, he gave the crowning proof that man’s nature 
is a channel and pathway to God as well as from God. But 


for what Christ has done for man and taught us concerning 
393 


394 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


man, that which we found of highest value in travelling 
“through man to God” would have been lacking in our argu- 
ment. , 

We come now to a subject which invites us to study, along 
with the natural that which is supernatural, and along with 
the human that which is superhuman. 


I 
GOD AS REVEALED BY CHRIST 


“No man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth 
any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the 
Son will reveal him.” These significant words found in the 
Gospel of Matthew teach us that it is from and through Christ 
alone that we can receive the perfect revelation of God. 

The method of setting forth the life of Christ found in the 
first three Gospels, commonly called the “Synoptists,” is (as 
we have already pointed out in a previous chapter) to throw 
in the foreground his human personality in all its marvel- 
lous ethical qualities, and let the readers, as did the apostles, 
only by degrees make their inference and at length reach their 
conclusion that he is verily “the Christ, the Son of the living 
God.” St. John’s method is to place the announcement of 
his divine and eternal sonship in the beginning of the Gospel, 
and to show how consistent all the subsequently recorded facts 
of his life are with that high claim. If, without making in 
the beginning any dogmatic claims that the person of whom 
we write is divine, we can, by simply showing how he himself 
thought and spoke of God and how his wonderful uplifting, 
ethical influence has been felt in every sphere of human life, 
bring the reader to draw his own inference and conclusion 
that verily this man must be the Son of God, our method will 
probably prove the wisest and best in dealing with unbelievers. 
On the other hand, to strengthen and develop the faith of 
those who are already believers in his divinity, the method of 
John’s Gospel is doubtless most effective. In the Synoptists 
we read most concerning what he said and did as the Son of 
Man; in John’s Gospel we have a revelation of what he was 


THROUGH CHRIST TO GOD 395 


as shown by what he said and did as the Son of God. Studying 
all four Gospels we see how man and God meet in Christ. 


I. Christ’s Doctrine of God 


What, now, let us ask, are the truths about God which are 
the peculiar and special revelation of Christ to the world? 
Whether disclosing them for the first time or completing the 
previous partial revelations of nature and of the Old Testa- 
ment matters not, for in either case we owe the revelation in 
its fulness to Christ. Let us first name, without for the time 
being discussing, the most important and precious truths con- 
cerning God which we owe to Christ. We name these ten, 
and the fact that they have become thoroughly and universally 
familiar to the Christian world is all the greater proof of the 
effectiveness of Christ’s revelation. 

(1) God is Spirit—not merely spiritual, as if spirituality 
were one of his attributes, but God is Spirit; the very essence 
of his nature is Spirit. God is a personal Spirit; and they that 
worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. 

(2) God is Life and the Life-Giver. “I am the way and 
the truth and the life.’ “I am come that ye might have life, 
and that ye might have it more abundantly.”’ And the life 
that he brought is not that of the flesh, but that of the spirit. 
And all this he said because he himself had come from Him who 
was the fountain and source of all life. 

(3) God is Light, the banisher of darkness. If ever any 
revelation of God made him luminous, that of Christ did; but 
it did more; it made him the luminary in our heavens never 
more to become invisible. It was not by throwing light on 
God, but by removing the clouds and revealing God in his 
own light that Christ rendered this great service and revealed 
God as the very Light of Light. 

(4) God is the Father—first, in a sense that is real and true, 
the Father of every human being, and secondly, in a more 
important and precious sense, the Father of those human 
beings who, having accepted him by faith, are his obedient, 
loyal, and loving children, and, thirdly, the Father in the 
highest and truest sense of Jesus Christ. 


396 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


(5) God is Love—love is the most central and essential 
attribute of his nature. Love is the moral dynamic in hu- 
manity, the greatest power on earth. Concerning God’s power, 
as mere force, Christ has little to say; the reason is plain: 
he located God’s omnipotence in his love—indeed, made all of 
his attributes expressions of love. 

(6) God is a Servant as well as a Sovereign—his sovereignty 
manifests itself not primarily in power and what he exacts of 
men, but in infinite love for men and ceaseless service to men. 
“He that is greatest among you shall be servants of all.” This 
ideal of greatness for man grew out of his interpretation of 
Divine Sovereignty in terms of service. 

(7) God is Human—the divineness of man and the human- 
ness of God are expressions suggested by Christ’s words, which, 
rightly interpreted and safeguarded, serve well to define what 
God is as well as what man is. ‘He that seeth me seeth the 
Father,” said Christ. “I and the Father are one.” And this 
he said not to prove that he was like God and divine, but that 
God was like himself, and human in some real and true sense. 

(8) God’s providence in behalf of his children is minute 
and ceaseless, and while it concerns incidentally their material 
and temporal life, it 1s directed always and everywhere mainly 
toward their moral and spiritual good as its chief and final 
end. To get men rid of sin, to secure their highest holiness 
and largest usefulness, this is the aim and end of God’s “special 
providence.’ 

(9) In the unity of the Godhead there have been eternally 
three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, so 
related to each other and to us that each is essentially immanent 
and active in the ongoing of the world. 

(10) God’s care and kingdom embrace not only the life that 
now is, but a larger, richer, and happier life that follows the 
death of the body. Christ brought life and immortality to 
light in and through his teachings and his resurrection from 
the dead. 

Who, now, let us ask, can estimate the value and influence 
upon mankind of the revelation of these ten great truths about 
God? To say that they constitute a reinterpretation of God 


THROUGH CHRIST TO GOD 397 


is perhaps but half the truth. They are to such an extent a 
re-definition and reconstruction of the very idea of God, such 
an enlargement of the comprehensiveness of the nature and 
character of God, as to make us feel that up to this time man- 
kind had been making their onward way in nothing more 
than a twilight—that the coming of this revelation of God 
was indeed and in truth the rising of the Sun of Righteousness. 

In many points Christ reuttered truths concerning God that 
were already fully revealed. But here are ten particulars in 
which he has either reinterpreted and enlarged the conception 
of the Godhead as hitherto known, or else has revealed for the 
first time the nature and attributes of Deity in terms which 
so fully satisfy the mind and the heart of man as to make 
Christ’s doctrine of God forever thereafter to be the world’s 
accepted doctrine of Deity. Some of these great truths we 
have already discussed in this volume. Here and now we 
desire to call particular attention, even though it involves 
something of repetition, to three of the ten great truths con- 
cerning God which are here mentioned as the peculiar revela- 
tion of Jesus Christ. 


2. The Fatherhood and Love of God 


We cannot too often mention or too strongly emphasise the 
fact that the first and perhaps greatest service which Christ 
has rendered to the human race is found in his revelation 
of God as a Father. In so doing he brought God near to 
man and made him a Being to be loved and adored rather 
than one simply to be feared and held in awe. The divine 
attribute which most fully defined the moral character of God 
before Christ came was holiness; but holiness had as its lead- 
ing characteristic to the men of that day the idea of aloofness, 
separateness, not only from sin but from sinners. Jehovah 
was regarded by the world generally as a Sovereign whose 
leading attribute was unlimited power, and who was to be 
feared, adored, and worshipped with awe as one far removed 
from man, and more ready to punish than to bless. But it was 
reserved for Christ to teach men that sublimest and most wel- 
come of all truths concerning God comprehended in the two 


398 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


words ‘‘Fatherhood” and “Love.’’ At the very beginning 
of the Gospels, in the Sermon on the Mount, Christ calls God 
our ‘‘Father’’ no less than sixteen times, and he continued to 
use this as his favourite designation for the divine Being. 
God is referred to as the Father no less than two hundred and 
fifty times in the entire New Testament. By teaching men 
to address their prayers to “Our Father” in heaven Christ 
gave a significance and a preciousness to prayer that it had 
never had before. In giving this new name to God, Christ 
did not depreciate any attribute that God was conceived of 
as possessing, but he ethicised, spiritualised, enriched, and en- 
nobled all the divine attributes. 

It is impossible to exaggerate the value to religion of this 
revelation of God as a Father which Christ has thus given 
to the world. The picture of God that is presented in the para- 
ble of the prodigal son has touched the heart of a sinful world 
as nothing else in all literature has ever touched it. This 
matchless piece of literature really ought to have been called 
the parable of the loving father rather than of the prodigal 
son. When Christ taught that God is love, and that he loves 
the whole world, and that he has so loved the world as to give 
his only-begotten and well-beloved Son that whosoever would 
believe in him might have eternal life, he at once and for all 
time to come transferred the point of emphasis in the world’s 
idea of God from the attribute of power, where it had so long 
been, to the attribute of love. Henceforth love, not power, is 
sovereign among the attributes of God; but it is a love that 
is in itself unlimited in power, inseparable from holiness, and 
unceasing in its service for those who are loved. How im- 
portant and precious is the revelation of God contained in 
these words: ‘For your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have 
need of all these things. Therefore seek ye first the kingdom 
of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be 
added to you.” “Make your Heavenly Father’s will and the 
service of your fellow-man your delight, and your wants shall 
be his care.”’ This conception of God transforms religion from 
a dreaded drudgery into a delightful duty. Philip truly said, 
“Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us’—and he might have 


THROUGH CHRIST TO GOD 399 


added, nothing less than the revelation of God as a Father 
can possibly suffice to satisfy the heart of man. The mind 
and the heart of man alike are restless until they find rest 
in the loving Fatherhood of the living God. 

‘A well-known theologian of England, the late Dr. J. Agar 
Beet, is the author of a notable volume that bears the title, 
“Through Christ to God,” in which he says: 


“Examining his words as recorded in the four Gospels, we 
find that Christ spoke frequently and emphatically about a 
Father in heaven, the unseen Creator and Ruler of man and 
of the universe; and this conception moulded and coloured all 
his teaching. He spoke also of God as taking deep interest in 
man and as coming near to him to save and to bless, and as 
an object of man’s trust and affection and a source of hope 
and joy. The same ideas underlie the entire New Testament. 
. .. The definite and somewhat complex conception of God 
so clearly portrayed on the many-coloured pages of the New 
Testament are altogether different from every conception of 
God set forth in the entire literature of the world except so 
far as later literature has been moulded by Christian teaching. 
It is a matter of simple historical fact that the New Testament 
embodies a complete revolution in man’s conception of God. 
The only explanation of all the facts of the case is that this 
new conception of God came from the lips of the great Teacher 
at whose feet sat, immediately or mediately, all the writers of 
the New Testament.” 


3. Sovereignty and Service 


Sovereignty among men has as a rule manifested itself in 
compelling men to serve the sovereign. Indeed ascending 
to the place of sovereignty has oftenest been won, in the 
first instance, by some man developing the power to so lead 
and rule over others as to compel them all to serve him; 
and one’s maintaining the seat of sovereignty has generally 
depended upon the continuance of his power to compel his 
fellow men to serve him. Sovereignty so secured and so 
maintained develops hate and enmity on the part of those who 
are compelled by force to serve; and such sovereignty rests 


400 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


on an insecure foundation. Not like this, Christ taught us, is 
the sovereignty of the Heavenly Father. 

In teaching us that God was like himself and that he came 
not to be ministered unto, but to minister, Christ taught us 
that God was not only our Father to be honoured, loved and 
worshipped, but that he is like every true parent, a servant, 
our most loving and faithful and self-sacrificing servant, 
the servant of all men. “Although the truest name for God 
in his relation to his creatures,’ says Dr. W. N. Clarke, “is 
that of Father, he is nevertheless the servant as well as the 
Father to all his creatures. That he must be the great servant 
of the universe is evident as soon as we remember that from 
him proceed all the wisdom, power, love and patience that it 
needs or has ever needed. “My father worketh until now,’ 
said Christ. God is as actively at work in his universe to-day 
and all the days as he ever was in creating it, and his work 
is perpetual ministration. The universal sovereign is the 
universal servant; and, if he ceased to serve, the universe 
would cease to be.’’ No other conception of Deity save that 
of Christ ever combined the sovereign and the servant in 
God. It is sovereignty dominated by love and the spirit of 
helpfulness that has at its command infinite power to perform 
its ceaseless labours of love. “He that would be greatest 
among you, let him be servant of all.” This is the divine 
pathway to power among men even as it is with God. 


LT 
GOD AS REVEALED IN CHRIST 


But Christ has given, in what he was in himself as God 
incarnate, a more significant and profound revelation of the 
heavenly Father than he gave in what he said concerning 


God. 
, 1. The Divine-Human Person 


Side by side with the profound and majestic sentence with 
which the first book in the Old Testament begins—‘“In the 


THROUGH CHRIST TO GOD 401 


beginning God created the heavens and the earth’’—stands 
the opening sentence of the fourth Gospel which is probably 
the last in date of all the books found in the New Testament 
Canon: “In the beginning was the Word (Logos) and the 
Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was in 
the beginning with God. In him was life and the life was the 
light of men. This was the true light that lighteth every man 
that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the 
world was made by Him. And the Word was made flesh, 
and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of 
the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” 
It is thus that the last of the inspired writers describes how 
“God hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son.”’ 
What now is the special significance, let us ask, of this term 
“Logos” when applied to Christ as the Word of God? Pass- 
ing over for the time being the view of those who connect St. 
John’s use of this term “Logos” with its use in the writings 
of Philo and the Alexandrian philosophy, we can give a “‘com- 
mon sense’ interpretation to it which makes of it an uncom- 
monly significant and luminous term for describing the work 
of Christ, the personal Word, in revealing to men the mind 
and heart and will of the Heavenly Father. A word is the 
method or means by which one rational or spiritual being 
conveys his thoughts and feelings to another and also by 
which he executes his will. Words are outward expressions 
of inner thoughts, ideas, feelings, volitions. In calling Christ 
the “Word of God,” the New Testament means to teach that 
he is the visible and audible Expression of the mind and 
heart of God. He is the method or means by which the 
Father conveys to man his thoughts and feelings. Christ 
is the perfect revealer of God the Father to man. God 
executes his will by a word, the word of power. We say that 
“God the Father plans, God the Son executes, and God the 
Holy Ghost applies.” If God the Son is he who executes the 
plans and purposes of the triune Godhead in the creation, 
redemption and evangelisation of the world, it is quite an 
intelligible and appropriate designation to call him the personal 


402 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Word of God. Such seems to be the significance and explana- 
tion of this term as applied to Christ. 

We may say, then, that, “the divine Logos became the in- 
carnate Logos in order that he might become the revealer 
of the Father. His ‘revelation value’ lay in this, that by him 
divine love was made audible and visible. The Father, strug- 
gling to express himself, found utterance in Jesus. Jesus 
was to the mind of the Father what a word is to the mind of 
man—the vehicle of expression and communication.” Signs 
and symbols are means of communication between individuals ; 
but they are at best imperfect instruments or channels of 
thought. Articulate words alone convey ideas accurately and 
perfectly. What articulate words are to signs and symbols 
as means of conveying thoughts, such is Christ, the personal 
Word, as compared with all other methods employed by God 
to reveal himself to the world. The term “Logos” thus in- 
terpreted in its application to Christ, ceases to be, as it is to 
many, an ambiguous term, veiled in mystery, but becomes at 
once an intelligible, simple, and luminous term describing 
Christ as the revealer of the Father in Heaven.* 


2. The Incarnation 


When Christ said: “He that hath seen me hath seen the 
Father,’’ he was not trying to define who and what he himself 
was, but rather, as the context plainly shows, who and what 
God is. These words are generally used to prove that Christ 
was Godlike and divine. Should they not rather be used to 
prove that God is Christlike and in some real and true sense 
human—that there is humanity in God as well as divinity in 
man? “In the creation,’ some one has said, “man was made 


1 Instead of the author of the fourth Gospel getting his conception and 
use of the Logos from Philo, says Dr. G. P. Fisher, it is much more in 
keeping with the facts to say that Philo’s conception of the Logos was 
derived from the Old Testament and the Apocryphal writings. Com- 
mingled with Philo’s use of the term are found conceptions of the Logos 
derived from Plato. In the Gospel, the Logos is personal. In Philo, 
Logos usually signifies the Platonic idea of reason, which idea is absent 
from the Gospel. “No Greek speculations respecting the divine nature,” 
says Harnack, “had any influence on the Johannean theology. St. John’s 
Logos has little more in common with the Logos of Philo than the name.’ 
{See Fisher’s “Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief,” pp. 284-5.) 


THROUGH CHRIST TO GOD 403 


in God’s image; in the incarnation God was made in man’s 
image.” In the person of Christ the divine and human unite 
as nowhere else; and it was that which was genuinely human 
in Jesus as well as that which was truly divine in him that 
made him to be, in his person as well as by his words, the 
most perfect revealer of God. That he was the eternal Son of 
God, the express image of the person of the Father, and 
possessed of the fulness of the Godhead bodily are but 
different statements found in the New Testament which de- 
clares his real and true deity. But the Gospel narrative shows 
that it was when he was most truly and genuinely human 
rather than when he was most mysteriously divine that he most 
noticeably drew men to him and influenced them to believe 
in God and in himself as the Messiah. Christ was never more 
truly human than when he died on the cross, and yet it was 
while witnessing his sublimely human suffering and death 
that the centurion looking on was led to exclaim: “Truly this 
was the Son of God.” In like manner Christ said: “And I, 
if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me,” and he might, 
perhaps, have truly added, “And I, if I be not lifted up in 
suffering and death on the cross, cannot draw all men unto 
me.” “He closed his eyes to show us God.”’ 

It was the manhood of Christ, with all its human limita- 
tions, not less than his divinity, that made him God’s best 
medium for revealing himself to the world. Dr. George A. 
Gordon has developed this point at some length in his volume 
titled “Through Man to God,” where he says: “The greatest 
thing that we know is man; the greatest man that we know 
is Jesus Christ. When, therefore, we hear Christ say, ‘He 
that hath seen me hath seen the Father,’ we have a guide to the 
heart of the Eternal of infinite moment. . . . In Jesus we have 
man at his highest, our humanity carried to its best. The 
method of approach to God in this text implies an ascent 
through man to God and also a descent of God in man. The 
ascent to man through God receives its highest expression in 
Jesus Christ. Jesus stands for a method of revelation. The 
supreme path of God is through the humanity of Jesus, and 
the perfect humanity of Jesus supplies the ideal path. As 


404 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


the foothills lead to ever higher ranges until the sovereign 
summit of vision is at last reached, so the revelations of the 
prophets lead to the one supreme and perfect revelation of 
Jesus. There is nothing in all the universe to account for 
Jesus unless at the heart of the universe there is a love equal 
to his. The cause must always equal the effect; Jesus is not 
self-created; he himself points backward to his origin in the 
Eternal.” “The incarnation,’ says Dr. Newman Smyth, “may 
be viewed as the realisation in space and time of God’s eternal 
humanness—the eternal humanness of God’s nature is objec- 
tified and realised in the person of Christ.” The incarnation 
enables God on his part to be more to the human race than he 
could be without it. It is because Christ is human and brings 
to us the eternal humanness of God that God in Christ means 
so much more to the world than God before Christ, or God 
without Christ, could possibly mean. 

The Christ of the Bible, the doctrine of the incarnation, 
or the divine-human person of the Redeemer, furnishes the 
strongest credential of all in proof of a divine element in the 
Bible. Let men differ as they may about the inspiration of 
the Bible, and the proportion of the human and the divine 
in it, they all agree—at least all who recognise anything as 
divine,—that the voice of God speaks to the race in and 
through the person of Jesus Christ. Not only is he the most 
perfect man that has ever appeared in the history of the 
world, but the evidence that he is more than a man is so 
great that it is more unreasonable to deny than to admit his 
divinity. The grandest force in the world to-day is the 
personal influence of Jesus. One might as well say that a 
mere man could have created the world and all things therein 
as to affirm that Christianity and all that it represents in history 
and in the world to-day has emanated from a mere man. 
Every feature of Christ’s character and work bears the impress 
of its divine origination. Others as well as Goethe have found 
reason for believing and saying that, “If ever the divine ap- 
peared on earth, it was certainly in the person of Jesus.” 
The divine has appeared, and Christ is the divinest of all the 
divine that has appeared. He is the very soul of the Bible, 


THROUGH CHRIST TO GOD 405 


and his all-pervading presence in it, especially in the New 
Testament, imparts to it divine authority. 

“There has been a great deal of discussion and hot debate,” 
Dr. Lyman Abbott once said, “concerning the relation of 
Jesus Christ to the Infinite and Eternal. We do not know—at 
least I do not know—enough to define that relation, but we do 
know enough to define his relation to us. That definition may 
be very briefly given in the following words: The supremest 
work of God is man whom he has made in his own image. 
The supremest revelation, therefore, of God is that afforded by 
the life and character of man. The supremest ideal of hu- 
manity is Jesus Christ. Therefore the supremest revelation 
of God to man is that to be found in the life and character 
of Jesus Christ. What we celebrate on Christmas is not 
merely the birth of the Christ-child, symbol of all innocent 
childhood; we celebrate a new unveiling of God to humanity, 
the dwelling of God in humanity. We celebrate the day when 
the love of God dawned on the world, and the fear of the 
gods began slowly and sullenly to give way before the coming 
of the New day. Every year Christmas repeats its message: 
Fear God no more; he brings liberty to the enslaved, light to 
the despairing, and purer joy to the glad-hearted. He is the 
Comforter of the sorrowing, the Physician of the sick, the 
Healer of the sinful, the Friend and Companion of man.. 
When I am asked ‘Is Jesus Christ God?’ I reply, ‘God is 
more than the sum of all his manifestations. Jesus Christ is 
one of his manifestations, but God is more than Jesus Christ. 
Jesus Christ is God manifest in the flesh, and God entering 
into that flesh in order that he may enter into the whole of 
humanity. He is God in man. I believe that God came into 
Christ and filled Christ full of himself in order that Christ 
might come into us and fill us full of himself.’ ” 


III 
GODVASHREV EAL EDYRAROUGH: CHRIST 


But God has been revealed not only in Christ and by Christ; 
he has been and is still revealed to men through Christ. This 


406 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


revelation of him is no less important and vital than the two 
revelations already considered. 


1. Through the Human Jesus to the Divine Christ 


Suppose a man says to you that he cannot understand how 
Christ can be God if he is a real man; and therefore, believ- 
ing in his manhood, he cannot say that he believes in the Deity 
of Christ—how are we to deal with such a one? I can only 
tell you how I would deal with him. I would tell him that 
he is in the state of mind that the Apostles of our Lord 
were in when they first became his disciples, and they remained 
in his fellowship for over two years before any one of them 
declared his faith in what we may call the divinity of our 
Lord. I would ask him to follow and study Christ in one of 
the Synoptic Gospels. (Matthew, Mark or Luke), which are 
supposed to give the events of Christ’s life in their approximate 
historical and chronological order. These gospels do not 
represent the Apostles as thinking of him in terms of deity as 
the Son of God, until, towards the close of his ministry in the 
vicinity of Czsarea Philippi, we find Peter answering the 
question of our Lord as to what he and the other Apostles 
thought of him by declaring that he was “The Christ, the 
Son of the Living God.’ Now our Lord could have told them 
this, and given a credal statement concerning himself the 
first day he called them into service and fellowship. But he 
preferred that they should reach this conviction and faith by 
being with him and seeing his life and work and spirit, and 
hearing him speak from day to day. Arrived at in this way, 
in the school of experience, the confession of their faith meant 
infinitely more to them and to Christ than if they had been 
taught a formula of words the most perfect, and had been 
instructed to commit it to memory. 

There is a possibility and danger of our hindering rather 
than helping men in the attainment of a real sincere, intel- 
ligent, personal faith by telling them what they are to believe. 
Faiths that have been formulated for men and put in their 
mouths to say may or may not represent their real personal 
faith. I have an abiding conviction that the open-minded 


THROUGH CHRIST TO GOD 407 


teachable disciple of the great Teacher who will journey with 
the human Jesus day by day in the narratives of Matthew or 
Luke will come to his Caesarea Philippi in due time, and 
find himself ready to use words in describing his faith in 
Christ which he could not conscientiously have used at the 
beginning of what in all truth may be called his Christian 
life. The day a man begins to fellowship with Christ and 
to follow him he is a Christian in some true sense, no matter 
what he thinks of the Deity of the Son of Mary. It will not 
be long before he finds himself reading more and more, and 
with increasing satisfaction, the Gospel of John that identifies 
this companionable, lovable Son of Man with one who in 
the beginning was with God, and was God, and who later in 
the fulness of time became flesh and dwelt with men. : 

Let Churches erect and enforce what standards they may 
and will as conditions of Church membership—that is a matter 
which they have a right to determine for themselves—but in 
the matter of welcoming one into the fold of the true followers 
of Christ, let us be slow to demand that a ‘‘Czesarea Philippi 
confession of faith,” shall come at the very beginning of his 
fellowship with him who called himself the Son of Man. Our 
Lord knew that his disciples in due time would call him the 
Son of God. 


2. The Failure of the Sceptical Hypothesis to Account 
for the Christ of Christianity 


Perhaps the most serious attack ever made upon the Chris- 
tian religion was that which undertook, in the middle of the 
last century, to prove that the evangelical records were un- 
historical and untrustworthy. It was claimed that the four 
Gospels were not written until the second century was far 
advanced, and that they therefore do not represent trust- 
worthy history, but only a collection of traditions, legends, 
and myths with varying degrees of historic truth concerning 
Jesus. The names of David Strauss and Ernest Renan are 
especially associated with these attacks upon the documents 
which profess to give a trustworthy record of the leading 
events in the life of Christ. It is freely admitted by these 


408 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


writers and their followers that some such person as Jesus of 
Nazareth lived in Palestine at about the time indicated, and 
that he was a remarkable person, who, by his purity of life, 
his lofty conception of God as a Father, his rare gifts as a 
teacher, and his untimely and unjust death, deeply im- 
pressed the simple peasant people among whom he lived. So 
remarkable and influential was he in what he said and did and 
suffered that his life and death made a profound impression 
upon the people. The events and facts of his life were not 
then and there put to record, but they continued to be talked 
about long after his death. As each one talked about him, 
the tendency, all but universal in human nature, to magnify 
and make events just a little more marvellous than they really 
were manifested itself in an ever-increasing degree in the 
stories told of his doings. Such love and devotion as the fol- 
lowers of Christ had for their Master became creative. They 
had ‘visions,’ and by virtue of their faith saw things—saw 
that which was not as though it were. Thus it was that 
miracles began to be attributed to him. ‘These stories had been 
magnified and multiplied before a record was made. By 
this time it was a “tradition,” not trustworthy facts, that could 
alone be recorded. 

In legendary literature there is an original nucleus of 
historic truth in the narrative, but as the ball of tradition is 
rolled on down it keeps gathering stories more and more 
marvellous as to what the hero did, and presently it becomes 
impossible to distinguish the original nucleus of truth from 
the marvellous, and in this case miraculous, accretions that 
have gathered about it. Of only one thing men of the type 
of Renan and Strauss are confident—that everything attribut- 
ed to Christ that was of the nature of a miracle was due to 
tradition. The Gospels therefore are nothing more than the 
beautiful legends and myths of the Christ. For our present 
purpose, there is no need that we point out the differences 
that exist between the legendary and mythical hypotheses. 
They are one in affirming the unhistoric character of the 
Gospel records and in denying the fact of miracles. After 
tradition had had time to make a hero of Christ by having 


THROUGH CHRIST TO GOD 409 


accumulated marvellous stories concerning his miracles, then 
it was that they enthroned him as the Messiah; and the writers 
proceed to make a fit: “This was done that it might be ful- 
filled which was spoken by the prophet, saying,” etc. 

Now it is sufficient to say in reply to the legendary theory 
that it is not difficult in literature of the type found in the 
New ‘Testament to distinguish trustworthy history from 
legends. The four Gospels, even admitting the possibility of 
incidents of a legendary character getting into the narrative, 
bear as a whole the marks of trustworthy history. We may 
confidently say that if the four Gospels are to be classed as 
legendary and untrustworthy records then we have no trust- 
worthy history whatever in any ancient literature. More- 
over it would be a strange anomaly if a “legend” should be 
the most influential writing in the literature of the world— 
the most influential intellectually and ethically as well as 
religiously. And if the “mythical theory” were true, the Jews 
are the very people, it would seem, who ought to have wel- 
comed and accepted one who answered to their myth of a 
coming Messiah, whereas it was the Jews who rejected him 
and the Gentiles who have received him as their Messiah. 

And, then, there are the sayings and sermons of him 
who spake as never man spoke before or since. If faith and 
love and imagination can become visionary and create miracles 
in the physical world, can they do the same in the intellectual 
realm? Did the unlettered fisherman of Galilee invent the 
sermon on the mount and put it into the mouth of the Son 
of Man? 

But more effective still is that answer to these wild 
hypotheses which is based on the fact that practically all 
critics admit the genuineness and early date (before 68 A.D.,) 
of four of St. Paul’s Epistles (Romans, First and Second 
Corinthians and Galatians) and these either affirm or imply 
such a prevalent and widespread belief in a divine and miracle- 
working Christ as is set forth in the four Gospels. Certain it 
is that Paul believed in a divine Christ. But this fact has in 
turn led to a third “hypothesis.’”’ Bauer, another German 
critic, not satisfied with the mythical and legendary hy- 


410 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


potheses, invented another to get rid of the divine Christ: 
Christ did not himself claim to be divine, but Paul interpreted 
him in terms of Deity, and this interpretation, although it was 
a misinterpretation and therefore a stupendous untruth, not 
only gained credence but ultimately dominated the faith of the 
Church. Christianity should, then, be called Paulinism, seeing 
that it was created by Paul’s interpretation of the human 
Jesus in terms of Deity. And this hypothesis, if it were true, 
would create a new problem, viz.:—How can it be that a 
religion which insists upon truth and honesty in all its follow- 
ers is itself founded upon a lie? And what a bill of indictment 
against the human race, that the institution which more than 
any other influences the race for good is itself founded upon 
a gigantic misinterpretation and falsehood! 

Of all hypotheses none is so rational as that based on the 
acceptance of the Gospel records as true—as possessed of 
historical trustworthiness, such trustworthiness as we demand 
of any and all source-books of history. Nor need we claim 
for it immunity from mistakes and from criticism by virtue of 
its inspiration. On the contrary, we rather invite the closest 
scrutiny of its statements, subjecting them to every fair and 
reasonable test for historic trustworthiness, and being ready 
to throw out of the record any individual statement that may 
fail to meet the critical test of truth. Only in this way can we 
furnish the proper ground for confidence in the Scripture 
records, 

The holiest and divinest thing in all the Bible is its Christ. 
His presence there is its supreme credential—a truth we need 
continually to recognise and repeat. No criticism can shake 
the Church’s confidence in the trustworthiness of those books 
that enshrine his divine-human personality in flesh and blood, 
the books in which he ever lives and breathes, and from which 
he comes by faith into the hearts of all who devoutly read 
and study its teachings, 


3. The Influence of Christ on the Life of the World 


Christ said to the men of his generation that after the days 
of his flesh were ended, he was going to do greater things 


THROUGH CHRIST TO GOD 411 


than he was then doing, and he has richly redeemed his 
promise. Our Christ therefore ought to be, and is to us, a 
greater and diviner Christ than the early disciples knew, or 
could know, because we have seen his marvellous doings for 
more than eighteen centuries that have elapsed since they lived 
and died. Surely we ought to reinterpret Christ in our day 
because we can see more of God in him and in his work than 
they could see who lived with him in the days of his flesh. 
That the Christ of the twentieth century has been proven by 
his nineteen centuries of achievement in the world to be a 
greater and diviner Christ than the early disciples knew, is 
witnessed by every page of every history of the Christian 
Church and of civilisation that has been written in the last five 
hundred years, if it has been faithful to the facts of history. 

The purpose of all reinterpretations of Christ by those who 
have caught the vision of his greatness is to awaken their 
fellowmen to a fresh and equally profound conviction that 
he is the very revelation of the love and power of God for the 
salvation of the world. As Christ was the incarnation of God 
so are men, his followers, to incarnate him. And as the in- 
carnate Christ through revealing God in the words he spake 
concerning him as no words of prophet ever spoken before 
had revealed him, yet revealed and interpreted him more 
perfectly in his own life and character, so is it true of his 
followers that their truest and most effective interpretation 
and reproduction of the Christ is not in spoken words, but 
in living the Christian life and in exhibiting the Christian 
character. Men may doubt and deny your creed, but your life 
and your deeds are arguments that cannot be doubted or 
denied. This truth needs, again and again, to be impressed 
upon his followers. 

How little Mount Sinai seems, said Heinrich Heine, when 
Moses is on top! And we may, with like thought, say: How 
little Mount Carmel seems when Elijah is on top! And how 
little the Mount of Transfiguration seems when Moses and 
Elijah are both on top! Yea, how little do Moses and Elijah 
and the Mount of Transfiguration all seem, when Christ, the 
matchless Man and the Lord of life, is up there on top! Per- 


412 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


sonality is the thing that towers aloft above everything else in 
this world. ‘Men do not spell church with as big a C as 
they once did,” some one has said, expressing his thought in a 
homely way, ‘nor preacher and priest with as big a P as they 
once did; but they spell manhood and Jesus Christ in larger 
letters than ever before in the history of the world.’ There 
is nothing in this world so good and great, and nothing so 
truly respected and reverenced, as a man who truly incarnates 
Jesus Christ in his own character and truly interprets him 
in his life. 

“Christ has left the mark of his hand,” says Dr. A. M. 
Fairbairn, “on every generation of civilised men that has 
lived since he lived, and it would not be science to find him 
everywhere and never ask what he was and what he did. Per- 
sons are the most potent factors of progress and change in 
history, and the greatest person known to it is the One who 
has been the most powerful factor of ordered progress. Who 
this is does not lie open to dispute. Jesus Christ is a name 
that represents the most wonderful story and the profoundest 
problem on the field of history—the one because the other. 
. . . He leads captive the civilised peoples; they accept his 
word as law, though they confess it a law higher than human 
nature likes to obey; they build him churches, they worship 


him, they praise him in songs, interpret him in philosophies — 


and theologies; they deeply love, they madly hate for his 
sake. It was a new thing in the history of the world; for, 
though this humble life was written and stood vivid before 
the eye and imagination of men, nay, because it veritably did 
so stand, they honoured, loved, served, him as no ancient deity 
had been honoured, loved or served. . . . The belief in Christ 
has for now almost two thousand years lived under a criticism 
the most searching and scientific that ever assailed any idea 
of mind or fact of history, and yet this criticism has only 
made the belief more active, more vigorous, more sure of 
its intrinsic truth and reasonableness. . . . The wonderful 
thing in the story is that what in the abstract would have 
seemed impossible romance is in reality the most sober fact; 


while out of the story, when viewed in relation to the course — 


—<~— = — 


THROUGH CHRIST TO GOD 413 


of human development, rises for philosophy the problem, 
Can he, so mean in life, so illustrious in history, stand where 
he does by chance? Can he who of all persons is the most 
necessary to the orderly and progressive course of history be 
but the fortuitous result of a chapter of accidents?” In other 
words, does not Christ’s all-dominating influence in the civili- 
sation of the world prove that he is more than a mere man? 

The distinctions made by wealth and rank and family and 
nationality and creed that so often separate and alienate 
individuals from each other and divide men into warring 
classes and opposing parties blinded by religious or racial prej- 
udice were barriers that did not for Christ have any exist- 
ence. He constructed his whole scheme of social salvation on 
the assumption—on the certitude—that all men have hearts, 
that there is indeed but one heart in all humanity, and love is 
the way, the only way, to reach that heart. Reason is the 
rightful ruler of the world, but only when love rules reason 
is the reign of reason beneficent and unifying. The kingdom 
of God which Christ came to establish in the earth is set up 
first in the hearts of men, and because love is the all-dominat- 
ing law of that kingdom, those who constitute its citizenship 
make one great brotherhood. 

Even Buddha saw and said that “never in this world does 
hatred cease by hatred; hatred ceases only by love; that is 
always its nature.” But it was the work of Christ to make 
love universal, to incarnate it, and practise it and inspire it in 
others. This he did by teaching that God is love, that his 
love knows no bounds except those which the good of the 
loved ones imposes. He taught that love must be extended 
to the lowest and least worthy. Love alone can overcome and 
disarm hate. An enemy who will meet force with force, and 
hate with hate to the very death, is disarmed and overcome 
when met by a love and spirit of forgiveness that are so sin- 
cere and genuine and generous that they leave nothing to hate 
and nothing to fight. And love that is inspired and directed 
by Christ does not end in and with emotion and feeling; but 
shows itself in service and extends this service whenever and 
wherever necessary to the point of sacrifice. When Christ 


414 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


taught and himself exemplified the religion of love, of service © 
and of sacrifice, he was revealing to us the heart of God. 
If any one demands proof that God is love, we need simply — 
point to the words and works and character of the divine- 
human Christ, by whom, in whom and through whom God 
is revealed as Love incarnate. . 


O Love of God incarnate, 
Who comest from above, 
To show us God the Father 
In human life of love, 
God’s love to earth thou bringest 
That men may see in thee 
How like man is the Father, 
How like God man may be. 


O Love of God incarnate, 
Life bearer sent to men, 

Who drinks at thy deep fountain 
Shall never thirst again: 

God’s life to earth thou bringest, 
And, though the thorn-path trod 

Led thee to death on Calvary, 
Thou wast the Son of God! 


O Love of God incarnate, 
Thy resurrection hour 
Revealed the life eternal, 
And robbed death of its power: 
Enthroned on high thou reignest 
That men may share with thee 
Thy life, thy love, thy glory, 
And live eternally. 


O Love of God incarnate, 
Thou everliving Word, 
Through whom the Father speaketh, 
In whom man’s voice is heard, 
In thee all love and wisdom, 
Divine and human, meet; 
When God through thee hath spoken, 
Love’s message is complete ! 
Wire mk 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 


THROUGH THE CHURCH TO GOD 


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CHAPTER SIXTEEN 
THROUGH THE CHURCH TO GOD 


I 
A. DIVINE-HUMAN INSTITUTION 


Whenever one or more individuals come to know God in 
and through a personal experience, then and then only can 
the Church of God begin. Christian experience expresses 
its faith in Creeds, and its spirit of altruism in organisation 
for co-operative service. But statements of faith that have 
not a vital experience back of them are sure to be heresies of 
the heart if not of the head and ecclesiastical organisations 
that bring together and bind together men and women who 
are without a real religious experience and a real Christian 
motive are, whatever else they may or may not do, sure to 
fail to do the things for the accomplishment of which Christ 
established the Church on earth. Religious experience, there- 
fore, is the thing of primary and abiding importance in the 
Church, and the essence of religious experience consists in 
knowing God. Of experience as a pathway to God—a path 
to which all other paths lead—we shall write in a later chapter. 


1. The Church Defined 


The Church may be defined in many different ways and 
from many different points of view. For our present purpose 
the Church may be most conveniently described as the collec- 
tive body of those who know God, who know him by ex- 
perience, and are living in fellowship with him. Those who 
have sought and found God cannot keep their knowledge to 
themselves. All men need to know God, and most men are in 
some sense seekers after God. If there be any who are ig- 
norant of God and who are content to remain in their ig- 


norance, they of all men are most in need of a knowledge of 
417 


418 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


God. The first and most important duty of those who know 
God is to impart that knowledge to others. It is the one 
great business of those who have found God to seek those 
who are lost, who have wandered away from their Father’s 
house, and bring them back home, to their home and to their 
Father. 

The Church is called the Church of God because God is 
its real spiritual and divine Head; and as such it existed 
in some sense from the beginning of man’s religious history. 
In the old dispensation under the theocracy, it had no organi- 
sation distinct from the Hebrew nation. It is called the 
Church of Christ because it is composed of those who believe 
in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and as such it is a dis- 
tinctly Christian organisation. It is called the Church of the 
Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit, the third Person in the 
Trinity, is the Divine Agent who works in and through it, 
guiding it in the accomplishment of its divine mission. But 
while the three Persons of the Godhead—the Father, the Son, 
and the Holy Spirit—in the unity of the divine nature consti- 
tute the Head of the Church, those who know God constitute 
its body; and its one great purpose in the world is to bring men 
who do not know and obey God to a knowledge of Christ 
as their Saviour and of God as Their Father and into obedience 
to his revealed will. 

In a passage of profound significance and of unequalled 
comprehensiveness the Apostle Paul describes the various 
elements that enter into and constitute the Church and how 
they all work together to accomplish the great spiritual end 
for which it was organised by its divine Founder: 


“And he gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; 
and some, evangelists ;.and some, pastors and teachers; for the 
perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the 
edifying of the body of Christ: till we all attain unto the 
unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, 
unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the 
fulness of Christ: that we henceforth be no more children, 
tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of 
doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, 


THROUGH THE CHURCH TO GOD 419 


whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but speaking the truth in 
love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, 
even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together 
and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according 
to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh 
increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.”’ 
(Eph. iv. 11-16.) 


It is impossible to conceive of an organisation among men 
having a nobler purpose and end in view than that which is set 
forth in these words. 

When a common and great work is to be done by a large 
number of individuals—a work widespread and far-reaching 
in its results upon a vast multitude of human beings—organi- 
sation becomes absolutely necessary. Organisation means 
leadership, government, and wisely directed co-operation on 
the part of all concerned for the accomplishment of a com- 
mon end. It is not necessary that this organisation be the 
same everywhere and at all times so far as outward form is 
concerned. Oneness in mind and heart is the essential unity. 
The Church may be one in mind and heart, one in loyalty to 
a common divine Head, and one in purpose and effort to bring 
men to a knowledge of God, and yet at the same time be broken 
up into many subdivisions, each working in perfect harmony 
with all others to lead men to a saving knowledge of a common 
God and Father. If we have rightly defined the Church as 
those who know and obey God organised for the purpose of 
bringing an ignorant and lost world to a saving knowledge of 
God, then the Church should constitute the world’s broadest 
and greatest highway leading men to God. Andrew and 
Philip are, for our present study of the Church, typical and 
ideal believers, in that having found their Lord they immedi- 
ately went forth to lead others to him. 


2. The Church a Witness for God 


Unless there were individuals who had come to know God 
by experience, we have said, there could be no Church of 
God, seeing that the Church is composed of those who, hav- 


420 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


ing an experience of God, are organised for the purpose of 
bearing witness. There is no one word which is oftener used 
in the New Testament to describe the mission of a Christian 
and the Church, than that of bearing witness. “Ye are my 
witnesses,” said our Lord more than once to his disciples. In 
thought if not in words, this chief function of one who knows 
God was recognised in the evangelical prophecy of Isaiah. 
And for this duty they were to be amply equipped :—“Ye shall 
receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you, and ye 
shall be witnesses unto me unto the uttermost parts of the 
earth.” And as the apostles go forth we find them saying :— 
“We are his witnesses of these things.” The English word 
“witness” is derived from an old Anglo-Saxon root (witan, 
to know), from which comes the word “wit,” which in its’ 
original sense is “knowledge,” as indicated in the expression, 
“to wit.’ Witnessing is therefore telling what one knows. A 
man may know what he does not tell, but he cannot tell what 
he does not know, though he may attempt to do so. A wit- 
ness for God is one that knows God and simply tells what he 
knows. It requires no elaborate preparation, no high degree of 
education and culture, no special gift of eloquence, to render 
this service for God to one’s fellowmen. Any one who knows 
his Heavenly Father and knows Christ as a personal Saviour 
and has the witness of the Holy Spirit within him that he is a 
child of God, and out of a full heart tells what he thinks and 
feels and knows—he is a witness for God even though he 
speaks with a stammering tongue. To render this service for 
his Lord is at once the privilege and the duty of every child of 
God. Of course the more he knows of God, the more he will 
have to tell about God. | 

And he who is most worthily and effectively to bear witness. 
for his Lord must have not simply a head-knowledge of God, 
but a heart-knowledge of him also. There is, as we have pre- 
viously noted, a knowledge that comes by study and through 
the intellect simply, and there is another and higher kind of 
knowledge that comes by personal experience. God’s best wit- 
ness bearers are they who have received training in both 
schools, that of the mind and that of the heart, who have both 





THROUGH THE CHURCH TO GOD 421 


an intellectual and experimental knowledge of his holy 
character and attributes, and of all those distinctive truths and 
facts of religion which are peculiarly open to this double 
method of attaining knowledge. The hope of a lost world for 
finding God is largely dependent upon the fidelity of the 
Church to its divine mission as a witness bearer. 


3. Lhe Church Within the Church 


It is quite common in our day to hear men speak critically 
and depreciatingly of the Church, as if it turned men away 
from God, as if its influence were to repel men from God 
rather than lead men to God, as if its teachings were a carica- 
ture of God rather than a true expression of the Divine mind 
and will. Is this criticism warranted by the facts? We 
think not—certainly not if the Church be rightly defined and 
rightly judged. We must distinguish between the visible, 
outward organisation that has in it some, and, it may be, 
many, who know not God and have not the spirit of Christ, 
and the true spiritual but less visible Church—the Church 
within the Church. Whensoever and wheresoever worldly- 
minded men and women who know not God are found in the 
Church, and are allowed to dominate, there may be just ground 
for criticising the outward, visible organisation that we call 
the Church. But these are not the true Church. The true 
Church, we must continually insist, is nothing more nor less 
than those who, no matter what particular organisation they 
belong to, know and obey God and are doing all they can to 
Jead others to a knowledge of him and into conformity to his 
will. 

But while it is an inner subjective spiritual experience, a 
personal and experimental knowledge of God, that makes one 
a member of the spiritual and invisible Church of God, it is 
also true that wherever this vital relationship between God and 
an individual exists it will manifest itself outwardly in charac- 
ter and conduct. So that it is the life one lives that is to 
others the best evidence and proof that he is a member of 
God’s invisible and spiritual Church. The best evidence for 
Christianity is a Christian. The best proof of the divine 


422 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


character of the Christian religion and of the divine claims 
of the Founder of the Christian Church is not the “evidences 
of Christianity” presented in argumentative and logical form, 
but to produce Christians who in life and character truly repre- 
sent the experience, the teachings and the ideals of Christian- 
ity. 
“The noble men and women whom the Church of God has 
produced, the “living Epistles,” furnish the final and most 
irresistible of all the arguments that lead men to have faith in 
God. After all necessary allowances and discounts have been 
made for the fact that the Church has now and has always 
had within its membership hypocrites, fanatics, warring fac- 
tions, and self-seeking and immoral persons, the fact yet re- 
mains that it is the greatest organisation of good and great 
souls working for good and noble ends to benefit and bless 
mankind that the world has ever seen. If it be imperfect, it is 
yet an organisation that has in it a large proportion of the best 
men and women in the world to-day, and these attribute what- 
ever is good in their life and character in large part to the 
helpful influence of the Church upon them. It is the greatest 
of all forces working against immorality and unrighteousness ; 
and no species of unrighteousness does it condemn more 
severely than hypocrisy in its own members, who, while 
professing to know and obey God, show by their spirit and 
lives that they know him not and obey him not. No one who 
is acquainted with the facts would challenge the statement that 
it is the greatest of all forces working for morality and right- 
eousness, and its work is altruistic and unselfish in a sense and 
to an extent true of no other organisation in the world. The 
best of all arguments for Christianity is a true Christian. 

The biography of the true saints—the men and women who 
have known and communed with God—is the best history of 
the true Church. To read that biography, to study that history, 
is to follow a pathway that leads most surely to God; for these 
saintly men and women owe their goodness and greatness most 
largely to the knowledge of God which they learned from 
and through the Church. The first and best way to lead men 
to God is to live a godly life and be in conduct and character 


THROUGH THE CHURCH TO GOD 4:23 


that which the Church sets forth as the Christian idea of man- 
hood and womanhood. To point to God is good, but to point 
to God and lead the way is better; and leading the 
way is a matter of living as well as of speaking. Whittier, 
in writing about a most modest but lovely Christian character, 
has given beautiful poetic expression to the irresistible influ- 
ence of a saintly life in leading others to God: 


The dear Lord’s best interpreters 
Are humble human souls; 

The gospel of a life like hers 
Is more than books or scrolls. 


From scheme and creed the light goes out, 
The saintly fact survives: 

The blessed Master none can doubt 
Revealed in holy lives. 


More and more the world in our day is applying the test of 
ethics to individuals and to Churches to determine the real 
moral value of what they profess to be and believe and do. 
The only type of Christianity that commands the respect of the 
world to-day is that which has ethical power to regulate the 
moral conduct, to develop moral character, to make men be and 
do that which is right in all the relations of life. We need to 
declare afresh at this time not only that the Church exists for 
the purpose of saving sinners and evangelising the world, but 
also that saving men and the world means getting men ready to 
live right as well as ready to die well, means getting men not 
only to join the Church, attend upon its ordinances, and support 
its institutions, but also to lead virtuous lives, to respect the 
tights of others, to make money honestly and spend it wisely, to 
discharge faithfully the duties which they owe as husbands, 
parents, neighbours, men of business, citizens, rulers. This is 
at once the supreme work and the crowning glory of the 
Christian religion. The religion that can make men live thus 
is the religion that is preparing them in the best possible way 
for that future and eternal life whose happiness depends upon 
the deeds done in the body. The Christian character is the 
crown and glory of the Christian religion. 






424 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


4. The Enlarging Social Mission of the Church 


Important and vital as individual experience is in making 
the Church a spiritual body, the Church is not individualistic 
but social in its nature and mission. In the reinterpretation 
of Christianity which is taking place in our day there is mani- 
fest a continually increasing emphasis upon the social nature 
and mission of the Church. Men as a rule move most easily in 
groups, alike to God and away from God. Attention has 
already been called to the fact that transformations that have 
taken place in men’s ideas and ideals of human governors 
and governments as related to free peoples who constitute the 
governed has shown itself more or less in a reinterpretation 
of God. God was formerly thought of as not only clothed 
with the august attributes of divine Sovereignty and as exer- 
cising all the powers of a monarchical Ruler, high above, and 
far removed from, the people, a transcendent Being feared 
and held in awe. But now the Divine Being is interpreted 
more and more in terms of immanence as a Ruler in the midst 
of his people whose government of them is based on the 
recognition of their rational and moral freedom. 

This does not mean any change in God; it only means a 
change in men’s ways of thinking of God. This reinterpreta- 
tion of God in terms of a divine democracy has resulted in a 
reinterpretation both of sin and of the Church with a new 
emphasis upon their social significance. In establishing the 
kingdom of God and his righteousness in the earth, we have 
to contend with and against not individual sins and sinners 
only, but against organised wrong that seeks to rob men of 
their rights—it may take the form of despotic civil govern- 
ment, or of militarism, or of landlordism, or of capitalistic, 
predatory industry that exploits and preys upon the poor and 
upon helpless women and children. When inherited tradi- 
tions and social customs and environment are lenient towards 
or sympathetic with any particular forms of social evil, sins 
that would be and ought to be shamefaced become brazen 
faced and bold. The reason why many sins in individuals and 
communities are so hard to fight and suppress is because their 


THROUGH THE CHURCH TO GOD 425 


social reinforcement is so powerful. An ethicised society and 
ethicised public sentiment can alone make a social sin—a sin 
against one’s fellow men—to be regarded as the hideous thing 
itis. And here, too, there may be sins of omission as well as 
commission. Sin is selfishness; and selfishness may take the 
form of idleness, which means living at the expense of other 
people. Parasitism is sin, said Henry Drummond, and all 
parasites, those who can work and should work and will not 
work, “are on the way to perdition, physically, intellectually 
and morally.’’ God who is himself the ceaseless worker, who 
is the servant of all his creatures, has no place in his kingdom 
for drones and parasites. It thus appears that a reinterpreta- 
tion of God in terms of democracy leads to a reinterpretation 
of the Church with a new emphasis upon its social nature 
and:a larger insistence upon its social mission.* 


II 
Pore eRe MOM CHURCH UND Y 


Christ founded the Christian Church. Men have founded 
Churches. Luther, Zinzendorf, John Wesley, Alexander 
Campbell and others are called “founders”? of Churches; and 
these several Churches are all at work in the world on a larger 
ora smaller scale. Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Protestant 
Catholic, all have their subdivisions, and each of these divi- 
sions claims to be, if not the one and only true Church, at least 


the truest Church, the nearest approximation to the one original 
Church founded by Christ. 


1. The Significance of a Divided Church 


No one can think seriously of the Church’s great and com- 
mon task of bringing the unbelieving world to a knowledge 
of God without considering the relation of that task and its 
successful accomplishment to the many divisions that now 
exist within the Church and their relation to each other. That 


1 See Walter Rauschenbusch’s “Theology of the Social Gospel” and 
companion volumes for further elucidation of these ideas. Also “The Social 
Creed of the Churches” by Harry F. Ward. 


426 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


there is a profound need for some kind of an organisation 
which shall bring together and bind together all the followers 
of Christ throughout the world in a closer unity than any 
which now exists, a unity which shall be not simply ideal 
and spiritual, but real, practical and in some manner visible, 
is a conviction that is finding stronger and more frequent 
expression every day among thoughtful Christian people. 
This conviction, moreover, is intensified by an opinion, which 
many have long entertained, that sectarian denominational- 
ism, religious bigotry, polemical controversy and whatsoever 
else causes sects and churches calling themselves Christian 
to wage war against each other,—such wars as early, medizval 
and modern Church history bears painful witness to—have 
been in the past, and still are so far as they now exist, 
serious hindrances to the influence of the Church in bring- 
ing the world that lieth in wickedness to a true and saving 
knowledge of God. A religion which teaches that real and 
true Christians will and must love not only their friends but 
even their foes, can make but a feeble appeal to men unless 
its followers practise what they preach—and how can a man 
love his foes unless he first loves those of his own household? 
The voices of a divided, a much divided Church, reaching the 
ears of sinners in inharmonious and more or less contradictory 
notes,—one saying, lo, here is the essence of salvation, and 
another saying, lo, there—can never be heard and heeded as 
would the clear, calm, unified voice of a Church that could 
speak as the one Church of a common Lord and Master. 
Changing our figure of speech and looking upon the re- 
ligious denominations as allies, we may say that allies need 
not hope to conquer a common enemy if they are continually 
dividing and weakening their forces, and not infrequently are 
found turning the weapons of their warfare on each other. 
If the allies in any war of nations were to undertake to wage 
their war with as much lack of alignment; with such independ- 
ence of each other and such disagreements and rivalries; 
with such insistence upon the rights of each and every division 
to undertake the same work in the same field; with such lack 
of unity in organisation and method; with such criticism of 


THROUGH THE CHURCH TO GOD 427 


each other, as have marked in varying degrees the relations 
of the Christian Churches and denominations and sects 
toward each other—Roman Catholics, Greek Catholics, and 
Protestants with their multitudinous sectarian divisions—if 
such utter lack of unity characterised an army, I say—defeat 
would be inevitable, or victory at least would be long delayed. 

These three great divisions of the Christian Church—the 
Greek Catholic, the Roman Catholic and the Protestant Catho- 
lic—all have their weak spots and vulnerable points and come 
in, though not equally, for just criticism, in that each is re- 
sponsible for imposing impediments and obstacles to that 
catholicity and unity which ought to characterise the followers 
of Christ for whose oneness with him and with each other 
Christ’s high-priestly prayer recorded in the seventeenth chap- 
ter of John’s Gospel was offered. The most conspicuous and 
culpable of these causes for criticism are pointed out clearly 
by Dr. O. E. Brown in the following words which, we are 
persuaded, apply to the Church in other parts of the world 
no less than to the Church in America :— 


“The identification of Christian faith with a dead, formal, 
traditional orthodoxy, as is done in the Orthodox Greek 
Church, has proven no small embarrassment to the Christian 
cause in many sections of the world. This travesty on faith 
as a vital force probably reached its height in the State Church 
of Russia. There even dissent was based on resentment at 
a modification of the phrasing of the Ancient Creed in the in- 
terest of historical accuracy and Christian enlightenment. The 
Christian faith that speaks in terms of the present living Christ 
is a dire necessity for those who seek to keep the Christ dead 
and buried in ancient dogmatic decrees and outgrown forms. 

“Then again, the identification of the Christian faith with 
submission to the word and control of the Pope of Rome as 
infallible in teaching authority and divine in jurisdiction, is 
also, as we are forced to see it, a challenge for the recovery of 
vital Christianity rather than an expression of the Christianity 
of faith. The rude shutting of the door of direct access to 
Christ by the harsh hand of papal autocracy, the assumption 
that blocks the way of millions from seeing with their own 
eyes the light of God in the face of the risen Christ, is the 


428 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


supreme cruelty that to-day bears the label of Christianity. 


The personal faith that brings the bleeding heart of humanity ~ 


into intimate and immediate touch with the life-giving heart 
of the sacrificial Saviour is Rome’s supreme need. One vital 
task, therefore, in the great work of the Christianisation of 
faith in our country is to see to it that the millions of those 
who regard faith as submission to the vicar of God in Rome 
shall come to know faith as participation in the life of the 
Son of God, whose province it is to make men free indeed. 

“Quite in contrast with that interpretation of faith as passive 
submission to the Pope of Rome is that identification of 


. 
3 
§ 
4 
| 
: 
7 


faith with sectarian individualism which refuses to have any © 


fellowship with those who do not subscribe to the precise form 
of doctrine, or the exact type of organisation, which bears the 
denominational trade-mark. The assumption that any single 
church system, either of doctrine or of discipline, can claim a 
monopoly of all the wealth of truth and power that are Christ’s 
is to forget that the Christian faith is as varied and as large 
as life itself. It is likewise a failure to recognise that faith 
has in it a progressive quality, and that it is enriched and en- 
larged with the enrichment and enlargement of personal life. 
It is needful, therefore, to recognise that the leaders of any 
one time may so emphasise some one phase of Christianity as 
to minimise some very vital essentials which are to be found in 
Christ. We may well believe that the thorough Christianisa- 
tion of our American Protestantism will bring into the Ameri- 
can Church a spirit of fraternity and of co-operation, the 
passionate purpose to answer the prayer of Him who poured 
out His soul in the words, “That they may all be one; even 
as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may 
Depomenugusn ai) 


There is a real and deeply felt need for a Church-wide move- 
ment looking towards what may not improperly be designated 
as denominational disarmament—and disarmament does not 
mean, either in a nation or in a church, disintegration and 
decomposition. For a group of nations to disarm would mean 
that they are going to regard and treat each other not as 
enemies but as friends and as allies in recognising the rights 


1“The Christianization of American Life.” The MacDonell Lectures 


for 1920. 


THROUGH THE CHURCH TO GOD 429 


and promoting the interests of all alike—a brotherhood en- 
gaged in a common cause, the good of all. Not until the 
Christian Churches can and shall treat each other that way, in 
the interests of the common Kingdom of God and the common 
good of mankind, can it be expected that the nations of the 
earth will do so on any large scale. 

The modern world is growing more and more impatient 
with the sectarianism which encourages separateness and 
thrives upon selfishness and seclusiveness, and emphasises and 
magnifies its differences from other sects as its possession of 
greatest importance. Money without limit and ministers with- 
out number are being wasted in maintaining multitudinous 
small and feeble churches just to keep up denominational or- 
ganisation, whereas modern-minded laymen in all the Churches 
have-ceased to be interested in the sectarian differences between 
the churches which once seemed so important. Christian people 
everywhere are now becoming interested more in the unities 
and agreements of their faith with that of other Christians 
than with their differences, and are responding heartily to 
movements looking towards greater co-operation in every kind 
of service which is common to all the churches. This is a 
healthful and hopeful sign. 


2. The Good and the Evil of Religious Denominationalism 


In so far as the religious denominations have represented 
and promoted religious freedom in the Churches and have 
served as a protest against enforced uniformity in creed and 
worship, and have stood for the right of Christian people in- 
dividually and collectively to interpret the Bible for them- 
selves, they are wholly good. The contributions of some of 
these religious “sects” so called, these “denominations,’’ as we 
designate the various branches into which the Christian Church 
is divided, are among the richest traditions and treasures of 
the modern Church. Instead of destroying the Church, they 
have saved it—saved it from a uniformity which, as enforced 
by ecclesiastical authority, might have proved its ruin. That 
these various sects and different denominations should have 
come into existence and have been developed and found such 


430 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


self-expression as they have during the past two or three cen- — 
turies, is the best possible proof of the existence of a liberty — 
and a courage of conviction in matters of faith and worship 
and fellowship, which is far more healthful and desirable and 
promotive of progress than could have been any organic one- 
ness of the Church which should have been secured at the 
expense of liberty in these matters. 

No effort to bring about greater Church unity and a more 
effective organisation of the Christian forces can possibly suc- 
ceed that should seek to rob any believers or any churches of 
their present liberty in matters of faith and worship and 
fellowship. ‘Unity in essentials, liberty in non-essentials and 
charity in all things’—this has long been and must remain 
the motto of the Church universal. 

But that sectarianism and denominationalism have been 
carried to a hurtful excess and have now become in many 
respects detrimental to the best progress and advancement of 
the Kingdom of God is a conviction that is becoming more 
and more prevalent among thoughtful Christian people 
throughout the world. 


3. Christian Unity a Prerequisite of Church Umty 


Are we to seek Christian unity through Church unity, or 
Church unity through Christian unity? Are we to get Chris- 
tian people to love each other by first putting them in the 
same Church? or are we rather to bring them into one Church 
by getting them first to love each other? Surely the latter 
is not only the “line of least resistance,’ but the only line that 
leads to the desired unity. And if it be true that “by this 
shall all men know that we are Christ’s disciples, if we have 
love one to another,” why shall it be thought a thing in- 
credible and impossible that these disciples should all be found 
willing to come together in the work of their common Lord? 

But while Church unity is desirable, it can only come about 
as a result of Christian unity. There can be unity of heart 
without unity of head. The thoughts of men, even of men 
equally Christian in spirit, differ as do the leaves upon the tree, 
but their hearts may be one in brotherly love, as the sap in the 


THROUGH THE CHURCH TO GOD 431 


body of the tree is one. If we seek to bring about the unity 
of the Christian Church by securing outward and organic 
union first, and by insisting on uniformity in confession of 
faith and in forms of worship, we can never gain it. But there 
ought to be no insuperable obstacle in the way of bringing 
together in harmonious unity in one great world-wide 
Christian Church all who accept Jesus Christ as their Divine- 
human Lord and Master, and who, being permitted to wor- 
ship him in whatsoever manner is most acceptable to them, 
are willing and anxious to co- -operate with all other like-minded 
disciples of Christ in establishing and extending the Kingdom 
of Christ in the hearts of men and throughout all the nations 
of the earth. 

Church unity can never be brought about by any one reli- 
gious sect refuting successfully the errors of all other sects 
and drawing the whole Christian world into itself. Church 
bigotry and denominational pride may cherish that fond dream, 
but it is a vain vision that will never be realised. It must be 
“peace without victory” for any one sect in so far as it is op- 
posed to and different from other sects. Providence is never 
going to give to any one religious denomination the honour 
and glory of having all others surrender and capitulate and 
seek admission to its membership. Into the one common and 
blessed Church of our Lord Jesus Christ we all hope some 
day to find ourselves one—one in mind and heart, and one, 
it may be, in name—many members in one body, and all 
members one of another, one in Christ. The day of peace and 
unity is coming some day; but it is going to be the result of 
universal “denominational disarmament,” a triumph of broth- 
erly love, marked by the sacrifice and surrender of things long 
counted important, and it may be vital, but which were found 
to be so far capable of modification as to be merged without 
the sacrifice of anything vital into that unity of the faith 
and of the knowledge of the Son of God that will make the 
whole world one in him. There are some rights which we 
have no right to surrender, and there are other rights which 
we not only have a right to surrender but which, being mag- 
nanimously and courageously surrendered, pave the pathway 


432 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


to peace and to power, to moral victory in genuine Christian 
unity. ‘‘He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it,’’ is 
a saying of Christ which expresses a profound truth not only 
for individuals but for collective bodies of Christian believers. 


4. The Primary Credential of a True Church 


If some men have natures that respond peculiarly and feel- 
ingly to a call to God that comes in and through a stately and 
majestic ritual, it is fortunate that there is a Church that 
provides just what appeals to their natures. If others are so 
constituted that they can approach God best in the simple 
manner of the Quaker or the Puritan, why should they not be 
permitted to do so? And surely it is well that the great, wide- 
spreading Church of God should provide for their needs, and, 
indeed, for the needs of all devout and reverent natures and 
all religious temperaments. That there should be different 
denominations within the Church of God, giving prominence 
and emphasis to different doctrines and different features and 
elements of worship that appeal to different natures, is not to 
be wondered at or objected to. But why should different 
bodies of Christians ever have gone to war with each other 
over these matters? Why should people not be allowed to 
journey toward God in whatsoever manner is to them most 
helpful and inviting? In nonessentials there should be allowed 
the utmost liberty; in essentials only should there be an insist- 
ence upon unity. 

The essential thing is that the Church shall lead men to 
God and not away from him, and shall impart a true and sav- 
ing knowledge of him and his will. So long as a Church by its 
use of art and music and ritual and ceremonies and formulated 
creeds and other adjuncts and agencies can appeal to the fact 
that it is by means of these instrumentalities leading men to 
God and imparting to them a true and saving knowledge of 
him, it stands vindicated in its polity and mode of worship. 
Surely there can be no fairer and more righteous standard by 
which to judge a Church than this: Has it throughout its 
history been leading men to God, and is it now effectively 
leading men to God and imparting a true knowledge of him? 


THROUGH THE CHURCH TO GOD 433 


or has it, on the contrary, been diverting men from God and 
obscuring the vision of him and misinterpreting his nature and 
will to men? The Church uses music and art and architecture 
and rituals and ceremonies and creeds. The question is, Are 
these things, as used by the Church, leading men to God and 
imparting a true and saving knowledge of him, or are they 
hiding God and diverting men from a saving knowledge of 
him? That is the true and righteous test by which to judge 
of each Church and each feature of the Church. Whatever 
diverts a Church from its first and greatest duty—that of 
effectively leading lost men to God—must be condemned. Do 
the pictures and graven images sometimes found in churches, 
for example, and the elaborate and artistic music, and the 
impressive, spectacular ceremonies conducted by a gaudily 
gowned clergy, and the recital of rituals, and the use of vener- 
able creeds—do these things lead men to God and teach men 
truly and effectively the nature and will of God? If so, they 
are as they should be; if not, they should be discarded or 
modified or substituted by that which will more effectively 
help the Church to accomplish its one great purpose in the 
world—viz., to lead men to God, to teach them who and what 
God is, and to bring them into right living relations with God. 

In trying, then, to find out which is the Church—the one 
Church that is truest and divinest—we cannot do better than 
apply the test Ubi Spiritus ibt ecclesia—where the Spirit is, 
there the Church is; where the Holy Spirit’s presence is most 
manifest in leading men to God and imparting to men a true 
knowledge of his nature and will, in the conversion of sinners 
and the edification of believers—there the true Church is to 
be found. And they who compose the true Church will have 
the spirit of Christ and be ready to co-operate, as opportunity 
may offer and wisdom may dictate, with all others whose one 
great purpose in the world is to bring sinners to God. 


5. The True Goal of Christian Catholicity 


We must therefore conclude that while Christian unity is 
a goal devoutly to be desired, it is something that must come 
first and show itself first in the spirit of brotherly love and 


434 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


co-operation in Christian service; and not until this inner 
unity marks the intercourse of Christians with Christians, 
and of the different branches of the Christian Church with 
each other, is organic union possible or desirable. Religious 
denominations have sprung up and multiplied and flourished 
in this New World as in no other country in the world in 
all history. We may count ourselves happy if Divine Provi- 
dence shall so overrule our multitudinous divisions and our 
agreements in disagreeing as to bring about a brotherly love 
that will show itself in a desire on the part of all to so relate 
themselves to the one body of Christ that all will be members 
one of another and co-workers one with another. While 
American Christianity may have been weakened by needless 
divisions, it has been happily free from one notable evil accom- 
paniment of unity that has marred the history of the past, 
namely, the effort of unified ecclesiastical authority and autoc- 
racy to enforce a uniformity in matters of faith and modes of 
worship which is incompatible with that perfect religious lib- 
erty which belongs to the sons of God whose knowledge of the 
truth has made them free. The unity that results from a spirit 
of catholicity and brotherly love, and the desire to co-operate 
in helpful service with all who seek to know and do the will of 
God, is the highest and best expression of true Christian 
liberty. This is the goal of American Christianity, brotherly 
love and co-operation first; then and thereafter organic union 
as may seem wise. In the meantime, while that larger and 
better unity which is to be desired is delayed in its coming, 
it is pleasing to know that in no other country in the world so 
truly as here in America have the different branches of the 
Protestant Christian Church worked together so harmoniously 
and so effectively, in friendly rivalry to impart a knowledge 
of God and to advance the kingdom of God both at home and 
throughout the world. 

Whenever and wherever Church divisions are marked by 
wrangling dissensions, it is in vain that we try to lead men 
“through the Church to God.” The Christian Church will 
effectively accomplish its high and holy mission of leading 


men to God only in proportion as individual Christians, and 


a 


THROUGH THE CHURCH TO GOD 435 


those groups of Christians that we call Churches, exemplify 
in their relations to and with each other the words of Him 
who said, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, 
when ye love one another.”” When love makes God’s children 
one, and the Churches of Christ one, then and then only, will 
they be one indeed. Nothing can win men to faith in God 
and fellowship with his children more effectively than the 
sight of brethren dwelling and working together in unity; and 
nothing can drive men away from God more effectively than 
for professing Christians to manifest jealousy, enmity and 
hate, and engage in wrangling disputes and angry dissensions. 
Within limits differences of opinion are legitimate and even 
healthful and promotive of activity and progress; but these 
limits must all be kept within the bounds of brotherly love. 

In the meantime it is most fitting that all men everywhere 
should lift up holy hands and pray for Christian unity, and 
for themselves resolve that for the future they will minify 
their differences and magnify their unities. When ecclesiasti- 
cal bigotry and hate come to be recognised and treated as the 
most hurtful of all heresies, and the spirit of brotherly love 
comes to be recognised as the best token and test and badge 
of orthodoxy, then will churchmen be Christians indeed, and 
Christ’s “high-priestly prayer” for the unity of his followers 
will be answered. 

“He drew a circle that shut me out, 
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout; 
But love and I had the wit to win: 
We drew a circle and took him in.” 

In words like these Edwin Markham has given beautiful 
utterance to a great truth. We have all been too long en- 
gaged in drawing circles which shut our Christian brothers 
out. It behooves the followers of Christ now, one and all, 
to enter into a new partnership with Love, and learn how 
to draw a circle big enough to take their brothers in. This 
is the only “wit” that can ever win the world. Thus and 
thus alone will come true Christian catholicity, that catholicity 
which can alone make the visible Church one, in a unity so 
‘winning that it will woo men to God. 


436 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Ill 


THE CHURCH’S AGENCIES FOR LEADING MEN 
TO GOD 


Among the different agencies employed by the Church for 
the accomplishment of its work, some have a more direct 
reference than others to leading men to God and imparting 
a saving knowledge of his nature and will. Such, for instance, 
are the Sunday school, the preaching of the Word, the publi- 
cation of Christian literature, and the establishment and main- 
tenance of Christian institutions of learning. These are all 
in the highest and best sense evangelistic in their purpose. 
Before all these and back of all these is the Christian home, 
which is not so much an agency of the Church, as it is one 
of those universal agencies belonging to God’s larger and 
wider providential government of the world. 


1. The Christian Ministry 


The foremost instrumentality of the Church which has been 
especially set apart to the task of leading men to God and 
imparting a knowledge of him is the pulpit and the preaching 
of the gospel by ministers divinely called to their sacred vo- 
cation. What the prophet and the priest were in the old dis- 
pensation, this, and more than these both, the gospel minister 
is in the new dispensation. These interpreters and prophets 
of God are they who, more than any and all others, have kept 
alive in the world the sense of God and the knowledge of his 
will. The Christian pulpit is incomparably the greatest single 
agency at work in the world to-day for leading men to God. 
All forces whose tendencies are Godward meet in the Church 
and converge in the pulpit. It is the preacher’s office to use 
all the arguments and bring to bear on men all the influences 
that he can command to lead them to God. He is God’s 
chosen ambassador, sent forth to stand in the highway or 
upon the watchtower and point out to men the path that leads 
to him. 

If we admit, as we may and must, that moral and spiritual 


THROUGH THE CHURCH TO GOD 437 


qualities take precedence over the intellectual and literary in 
qualifying men for effectively interpreting God to their fel- 
low men, it does not follow from this that intellectual equip- 
ment is of secondary and trifling importance in preparing 
the minister for his work. On the contrary, it is of the 
highest importance. No better proof can be needed to estab- 
lish the truth of this statement than to appeal to the fact that 
nearly every one of the illustrious prophets and preachers of 
righteousness, whose names find an honoured place in the 
history of the Church, obtained, in preparation for his holy 
calling, the very best education that was possible in the age 
and country in which he lived—and most of these men had 
special and extensive training in theological studies in addi- 
tion..to their general education, and their preparation fitted 
them for understanding and meeting the special needs of the 
day in which they lived. Is it a mere accident that an un- 
usually careful and thorough training in youth should have 
been followed in these cases by unusual usefulness and emi- 
-nence in later life? Or do the two facts sustain to each other, 
in some degree at least, the relation of cause and effect? Is 
it an accident that Moses and Paul, the two most influential 
characters in Old and New Testament history, should have 
been the most thoroughly educated young men of whom we 
_have any account in the Bible? Is it an accident that Chrys- 
-ostom, “the prince of preachers,’ even to this day counted 
_by the historian as the greatest preacher who has ever appeared 
in the Christian Church, should have gone through all the 
schools accessible in his day? Is it to be accounted an acci- 
dent that Martin Luther and John Wesley, the greatest reli- 
gious leaders and most influential preachers in the history of 
the modern Christian Church, should have come from great 
universities, where they tarried longer and studied more ex- 
tensively than their fellows? To ask these questions is to 
answer them. There can be no more important and sacred 
task given to mortal man than that of interpreting God to 
his fellow men; and if there is any one vocation that calls 
more than does any and all others for the best equipment, for 
knowledge the most extensive and accurate, for knowledge that 


438 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


comes both from religious experience and from study, it is the 
Christian ministry. 

In the artillery and navy the rule is that a gun shall be 
sixteen times as heavy as the projectile which it carries. In 
every human undertaking a man must be greater than his 
work in order to be equal to his work. Give a weakling a 
great intellectual and moral task to accomplish, and he will 
not put it over. Send forth a moral and intellectual weakling 
to deliver a great religious message, and he cannot do it. He 
goes into the pulpit and speaks like one who has to say some- 
thing but not like one who has something to say. That is 
a great message that has been committed to him who has been 
commissioned to impart to men that knowledge of the true 
God which carries in itself the issues of life and death. An 
intellectual and ethical weakling cannot supply the moral and 
spiritual power necessary to make it accomplish its mission of 
salvation. To be prepared for this great mission to which 
God calls not a few men merely but all of those who know 
him and have found fellowship in the Church, the first and 
most important qualification is to know God, to know him as 
he has been revealed in and through Jesus Christ, and so to 
impart that knowledge to others that they also shall know 
him and love him and serve him. 


2. The Christian School 


The history of education reveals the fact that in this sphere 
the Church has always been the pioneer. Although now civil 
governments in all civilised countries provide for the educa- 
tion of the young, for a long time this work was begun, pro- 
moted and conducted chiefly by the Church. Christian insti- 
tutions of learning, established and conducted by the Church, 
have their chief reason of being in the fact that they 
can greatly aid the Church in its one great purpose and 
mission in the world, that of imparting a true and saving 
knowledge of God to men. But what makes education Chris- 
tian is not the fact that a school is owned and controlled by 
a religious denomination. Whenever and wherever the aims 
and ends and atmospheres of a school are permeated and 


THROUGH THE CHURCH TO GOD 439 


dominated by Christian ideas and ideals, there is Christian 
education, no matter who owns and controls the school. 

The Church's interest and participation in education, mani- 
fested in founding and conducting institutions of learning, is 
based on the assumption that religion has an important and 
indispensable place in the education of the young, and a 
proper knowledge of God is at the very heart of religion and 
at the foundation of all true education. God is the first and 
greatest object of all knowledge. Education may be carried 
on without any aid from religion and without any recognition 
of God; but a godless education cannot develop moral char- 
acter in the educated, and the object of all education is to 
secure not intellectual development merely, but, even more, 
a lofty type of moral character in the educated man. By means 
of her institutions of learning the Church is enabled not 
merely to give due recognition to God and due emphasis to 
the value of the moral ideal in education, but to attract and 
guide and command the attention of educated and thinking 
men, and thus influence and more effectively than would other- 
wise be possible the highest and best thought of the world. 
The aim of Christian nurture is always Christian character. 

Teaching, rightly defined, is just as important a part of 
the work of the Christian church and ministry as is preach- 
ing. That is poor preaching which does not partake of the 
nature of true Christian teaching and which fails to educate 
morally and religiously; and that education is certainly not 
entitled to be called Christian which fails to make its chief 
and ultimate aim in the training of the mind, to be the building 
up of moral character, the making of cultured Christian man- 
hood and womanhood—and this is the end of all preaching. 
It is well for us to remember that Jesus Christ, the first great 
preacher of the Christian religion, is oftener called a teacher 
than he is a preacher, and is oftener declared to have taught than 
he is to have preached. And that portion of his work which 
partakes of the nature of Christian teaching is much larger 
than that which can properly be designated as preaching in the 
sense in which we now use that term. It was by Christ’s 
teaching, line upon line and precept upon precept, that men 


440 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


learned the greatest and most precious truth he taught—the 
Fatherhood and love of God. 


3. The Sunday School 


In the Church’s system of*religious education the Sunday 
School fills a large and increasingly important place;.and its 
work is so distinctly and emphatically religious that it calls for 
special consideration among the Church’s educational agencies _ 
of highest value. As an agency and influence at work leading 
the young to a knowledge of God, it reaches its highest func- 
tion. The influence of the Sunday School is seen at its best 
only when it is reinforced by parental religious instruction at 
home; but, whether so reinforced or not, it is perhaps the most 
powerful and far-reaching single agency now at work in 
Christian lands leading the young to God. A large and con- 
tinually increasing proportion of those who are saved and 
brought into the Church are saved while they are young, be- 
tween the ages often and twenty; and these young converts, 
it is found, have as a rule been trained in the Sunday School 
and come from it into the Church. But the Sunday School is 
not only the nursery of the Church whence it is now receiving 
most of its converts; it is in a large and true sense to be re- 
garded as the entire Church at work studying the Bible and 
learning about God, his word and his will. 

Since it has been found that the average age at which 
people are converted is about fourteen years, it follows that 
the turning point in the moral and religious life, the critical 
and strategic point for spiritual conquest, is not in the great 
congregation where the pastor is preaching to people who will 
average perhaps from thirty to forty years of age, but down 
there in the basement or over there in the annex, where the 
boys and girls are to. be found with their teachers in the 
Sunday School, or gathered in their clubs and leagues. Con- 
versions in mature life are growing relatively more and more 
rare and conversions in youth relatively more frequent. Sta- 
tistics taken something over fifty years ago in one of the 
Churches showed that about sixty per cent of those entering 
the ministry were converted in revivals and forty per cent else- 





THROUGH THE CHURCH TO GOD 441 


' where. Twenty-five years ago the per cent converted in re- 
- vivals, as shown by these statistics, had dropped to twenty- 
nine; and five years ago these statistics showed it had dropped 
to twenty-five per cent. These are very significant figures. 
As the converts come now mostly from the Sunday School, he 
is the wise pastor who will magnify his opportunity to work 
here and who will make companions and co-workers of his 
Sunday School teachers in seeking to save, to instruct and te 
train for service the young people of the Church. There is no 
' one phase of the pastor’s work that will count for so much, 
_. that will make his moral and religious influences so far-reach- 
ing and lasting in a given pastorate, be it long or short, as 
study and time devoted to guiding and inspiring the teachers 
in his Sunday School, and to personal work for and with 
the young people of the church. No movement of the Chris- 
tian Church in modern times is more significant and encourag- 
ing than the improvement that has been brought about in 
part, and is being still further brought about in the work 
and character of this great agency of the Church, than which 
none is more influential in leading the rising generation to a 
knowledge of God. 


4. Christian Literature 


Consider again what a mighty agency in the hands of the 
Church and always available for leading men to God, is 
Christian‘literature. From the tiny tractate and the ephemeral 
periodical to the ponderous and learned octavo volumes there 
is found in the printed literature of the Church something 
suited to the intellectual and moral needs of every seeker 
after God. The time was when the Church relied mainly 
upon the spoken word and upon the proclamation of the gospel 
by word of mouth to lead men to God; but conditions have 
now so far changed that many are contending that Christian 
literature has come to represent a force and influence as great 
as or even greater than the pulpit in the world’s evangelisation 
and education. 

Happily these two great agencies of the Church are not in 
any way opposed‘to each other, but each needs and reinforces 


442 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


the other. The Christian Church needs not only to have its 
printing presses busy publishing its distinctly Christian periodi- 
cals and books; but it needs to commandeer and control and 
mobilise as far as possible in the interests of Christian ethics 
and ideals all the great secular journals and great daily papers, 
which are perhaps the mightiest of all forces in guiding and 
governing the present-day world. 

While all these agencies of the Church serve other purposes, 
they have no more important function to serve than that of 
helping the Church to accomplish its one supreme mission of 
leading men to God. These are the features and agencies of 
the Church which serve to make it the world’s greatest path- 
way to God. 


5. The Need for Stirred Souls 


All these agencies need divinely stirred souls to make them 
effective as forces for the upbuilding of the kingdom of God. 
There is needed profoundly by cultured Christian people to-day 
a vision of the thrice-holy God whom Isaiah saw; and follow- 
ing this vision, a readiness to answer the appeal, “Who will 
go for us and tell men of the true God,” by saying, as Isaiah 
said, “Here am IJ, send me.” Had Isaiah, after getting that 
vision, refused to go and tell men of it, there would be no 
Isaiah in our Bible to-day. We have cultured souls and we 
have visions, but we are sadly in need of cultured souls 
stirred by the vision of God, and by a true vision of the 
sins and the spiritual needs of men—and this vision should 
be not only of the idolatries and sins of men beyond the sea, 
but of the awful idolatries and sins of the people here in our 
homeland. Here at the foot of our Mars Hills and in our 
cultured cities are sins and idolatries that should stir the 
souls and consciences of all cultured Christian men and women 
among us, and not until cultured Christian men and women 
are stirred to action with the passion of a Paul will these 
evils ever be brought to an end. Nothing is more needed by 
these multitudes who are bowing down before their altars 
“to the unknown God” than to give them a knowledge of the 
true God, of that Father in heaven whose offspring they are. 


THROUGH THE CHURCH TO GOD 4.43 


It is the stirred soul alone that can stir the souls of others. 
And how important it is that the souls of men shall be stirred 
by knowledge and not by ignorance, by truth and not by 
error, by faith and not by fanaticism; and how important 
also it is that this faith shall be faith not in error but in truth, 
and not in half-truths, but in the sane whole-truth as the 
truth is in Jesus. Men need not only to know God, but to 
know him aright—‘‘whom to know aright is life eternal.” 


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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 


THROUGH THE CREEDS TO GOD 


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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 


THROUGH THE CREEDS TO GOD 


I 
THE VALUE OF CREEDS 


When one considers how large a place the creeds have filled 
in the intellectual life of the Church in the past, it might seem 
an easy task to make an appraisal of them, and to rate them 
high among the moral and spiritual assets of the Church. And 
yet there are not a few Christians who doubt the real value 
of Church creeds, and they are free to declare that their 
reason for calling in question their value is found most of 
all in the past experience of the Church with her creeds, which, 
instead of securing unity of faith as they were meant to do, 
have proved to be ceaseless causes of doubt, discussion and 
division. It is worth while then to inquire how the Church 
came to have creeds, and what purpose they have served and 
may yet serve in the life of the Church. We are most con- 
cerned to know how they interpret God. Are the creeds of 
the Church helps or hindrances to faith in God? Do they 
reveal or conceal the real and true God? Do they clear the 
way or block the way for pilgrims who are seeking God? 


1. The Reason for Creeds 


Dr. Fairbairn begins his “Philosophy of the Christian Re- 
ligion” by contrasting the simple and winning statements con- 
cerning God and Christ found in the Gospels with the hard and 
difficult metaphysical and theological statements found in the 
Church creeds. And yet this comparison, which is so unfa- 
vourable at first sight to the creeds, is followed by a strong 
defence of these efforts to interpret in theological terms and 
by rational analysis the simple but profound facts and truths 
of the Christian religion. If the Gospels were merely simple, 

447 


448 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


easy and beautiful statements of religious and moral truths 
which, by reading once or twice, men could so fully fathom 
and understand that they would not need or care to read them 
again, because they had gotten all that they contained, the 
Christian religion would have been short-lived. It is because 
the facts and doctrines of Christianity recorded in the Gospels, 
although simple and transparent and beautiful, are at the same 
time deep and profound enough to challenge the strongest 
powers of the human mind to understand and interpret them 
that they have power to grip the minds of men from age to 
age. The Church creeds represent, we may say, the response 
of mankind to this profound and perpetual challenge of the 
Christian religion to the minds of men to give its great truths 
rational interpretation and expression. 

A creed should be a brief, clear, self-consistent and reason- 
ably complete statement of all the essential and cardinal doc- 
trines of the Christian faith with a special emphasis upon 
those truths that need most to be stressed in the day that 
calls it forth. In proportion as these qualities characterise a 
confession of faith, in that proportion will it be a useful and 
influential expression of the faith it represents, commanding 
the respect of all thoughtful and truth-seeking minds. Waters 
which might be powerless spread over wide acres become dyna- 
mos of power when confined in, and made to pass through, 
the narrow, rock-ribbed channels of Niagara. The truths of 
Christianity spread through ponderous volumes will not in- 
fluence many; they need to be condensed and reduced to clear, 
brief statements to give them dynamic force and intellectual 
vigour. 


2. The Mutable and the Permanent Elements in the Chris- 
tian Faith Distinguished 


If we have rightly defined the nature and functions of a 
Church creed, it follows that no one creed could possibly be 
written that would so fully express and represent the faith 
of the Church as to remain unchallenged and unchanged from 
age to age. Inasmuch as whatsoever is true in a creed is not 
discarded when the time comes for revision, or for writing 


THROUGH THE CREEDS TO GOD 449 


a new creed, but on the contrary its truths are reincorporated 
and perpetuated in the new, the mutability of a creed instead 
of being a thing to be deplored, becomes a condition of prog- 
ress whereby truer and more adequate statements of faith are 
made possible from time to time. 

They who seek to perpetuate old creeds in the Church by 
making it practically impossible for men to change them even 
when they would do so if they could—they who seek to make 
them binding and to invest them with sanctity and authority 
one after they have served their day and generation and 
have ceased to be a true and adequate expression of the new 
and larger faith of a new generation—they who do this are 
not the friends but the enemies of faith, and of Church creeds. 
And thus it is easy to see why the traditional Church creeds 
have come into disrepute, and why this has become a creed- 
criticising age; it is because these traditional creeds have 
been so deeply imbedded in Church “constitutions” as to make 
it exceedingly difficult if not impossible to have them replaced 
_by new statements of faith. And they may be imbedded deeply 
in Christian “sentiment” as well as in Church rubrics. ‘You 
cannot reason out,” said Thomas Carlyle, “what was never 
reasoned in.” A thing may get into us by “recitation,” as 
well as by “reason,” may get in by “recitation” before it gets 
in by reason; get in by recitation and remain in, even though 
it never gets in at all by reason. Where is there a Christian 
‘individual among us to whom the Apostles’ creed has not 
become at once familiar and endeared, by virtue of our reciting 
it over and over again from youth up?—and this regardless 
of whether we ratify and endorse every expression in it or not. 

That creeds do not necessarily minister to sectarian narrow- 
ness and bigotry may be proved, at least negatively, by the 
fact that among the Christian sects that have an unenviable 
‘reputation for denominational narrowness and bigotry are 
some that reject and denounce all creeds, claiming that they 
are not only unnecessary but unscriptural—affirming that the 
New Testament alone is their only credal statement. On the 
Other hand, they who have clear-cut, definite and well defined 
creeds in which they fully believe, may be broad-minded and 


450 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


abounding in charity, catholicity and brotherly love towards 
those who differ from them. Unity in the faith may charac- 
terise those whose Church creeds and Church affiliations differ. 
Those who insist on absolute uniformity and immutability in 
creeds are hindering and not helping the coming of the true 
Christian unity. 


II 
THE HIisTORIC CREEDS 


In studying the great historic creeds of the Church with 
reference to their interpretation of God and their bearing on 
present-day faith, we shall select four as best suited to our 
purpose—the Apostles’ Creed, the Athanasian Creed, the 
Westminster Confession of Faith, and the Thirty-nine Articles 
of the Church of England, of which the Twenty-five Articles 
of the Methodist Church are an abbreviation. These creeds 
are of authority and binding on believers so far as being in the 
canons and constitutions of the Churches can give them au- 
thority. If any reader should be disposed to say that in 
bringing these old creeds up for consideration, we will be re- 
viving old and dead issues, that they are at best but loosely held 
and enter but lightly into the present-day thought and life of 
the Church, and that any attempt to show their inadequacy 
to meet existing religious needs will prove a useless and 
thankless task—if he speaks thus of them, it may be well to 
remind him that one of the most active of the present move- 
ments looking towards Church unity is based on the hope of 
securing on the part of all the followers of Christ a return 
to a universal acceptance of the earliest of these creeds, the 
Nicene and Athanasian as well as the Apostles’. This shows 
that if they be “dead,” there are at least some who would have 
them resurrected and brought to life again. It is therefore 
altogether pertinent to institute an inquiry into these creeds 
to find out whether they be helps or hindrances to faith in 
God in our day. The paths to God are paths of progress, 
and it is very important that in seeking to conserve the truth 
of the past we do not mistake reversion for conservatism. 


THROUGH THE CREEDS TO GOD 451 


Of one of these creeds (the Apostles’) it may be truly said 
that it not only continues to be recited by worshippers, but 
is more widely used perhaps than ever before. It is, therefore, 
pertinent to ask: does it continue to be used and to hold its 
high place in Christian worship because all of its statements 
express acceptably the faith of present-day Christians, or does 
it continue to be used by the Churches generally in spite of 
the fact that some of the phrases and statements contained in 
it are unacceptable to some worshippers, and are uttered by 
them with mental reservation or with a margin of meaning 
so wide that it permits of liberty of private interpretation? 
Has any one of these historic creeds confined itself strictly to 
a statement of the fundamental facts of faith, or have they 
one and all gone beyond the bounds of fundamental truths, 
even incorporating to a greater or less extent statements that 
do not express the faith of many who are called on to sub- 
scribe to them? There is perhaps no better way of trying 
to find out what Christians need to express their faith to-day 
than by examining these historic creeds which, however great 
their historic value, no longer meet present-day needs. We 
start our inquiry with that one which is supposed to come 
chronologically first, and which is certainly the most acceptable 
to ‘the modern Church of all the ancient creeds, as indicated 
by its almost universal use in Christian worship. 


1. The Apostles’ Creed 


Of this creed Dr. McGiffert of Union Theological Semi- 
nary says that “to it perhaps more than to anything else— 
more even than to the Gospels, which were not widely read 
in the Middle Ages—we owe the fact that Jesus Christ is 
and always has been, the object of the Christian’s faith, and 
that his figure has never been completely lost, even when the 
true Gospel has been most overlaid with scholastic philosophy 
or with sacramentarianism or ecclesiasticism.” 

There is no agreement among theologians and Church his- 
torians as to when or by whom this most familiar and in- 
fluential of all the Church creeds was written. The earliest 
tradition is perhaps that stated by Rufinus, about 400 A.D., who 


452 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


says: “There was an ancient tradition that the Apostles, being 
about to depart from Jerusalem, first settled a rule for their 
future preaching, lest, after they were separated from each 
other, they should expound different doctrines to those whom 
they invited to the Christian faith. Wherefore, being all as- 
sembled together and filled with the Holy Ghost, they com- 
posed this short rule of their preaching, each one contributing 
his sentence, and left it as a rule to be given to all believers.” 
A writer bearing the name of Augustine goes further and 
pretends to tell us exactly what each Apostle’s contribution to 
the creed was: Peter said, “I believe in God, the Father Al- 
mighty”; John, “Maker of heaven and earth”; James, “And 
in Jesus Christ his only son, our Lord’; Andrew, “Who was 
conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary’; 
Philip, “Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead 
and buried’; Thomas, “He descended into hell; the third 
day he rose again from the dead”; Bartholomew, ‘“‘He ascended 
into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father 
Almighty”; Matthew, “From thence he shall come to judge 
the quick and the dead’’; James, the son of Alpheus, “I be- 
lieve in the Holy Ghost, the holy Catholic Church”; Simon 
Zelotes, ““The Communion of the saints, the forgiveness of 
sins”; Jude, the brother of James, ‘The resurrection of the 
body”; Matthias, “The life everlasting.’ And, being thus 
made, says Augustine, it was called the Apostles’ Creed. It 
will be noted that the inspiration of each Apostle was not con- 
sidered a divine preventive of his preaching a doctrine that 
might be in conflict with doctrines preached by his brother 
Apostles. It was thus, according to this tradition, to prevent 
variations and hurtful conflicts and to secure uniformity among 
the Apostles that this creed came to be written. In the ab- 
sence of a unifying creed the Apostles might contradict each 
other. This tradition is here given merely as a matter of 
literary curiosity; there is not the slightest ground for attach- 
ing any historic value to it; but it serves to show how this, 
our earliest creed, has threaded its uncertain way to us through 
legends and myths. 


THROUGH THE CREEDS TO GOD 453 


“I believe in God.” This, says Dr. G. A. Johnston Ross, 
was the first Christian emphasis. 


“The outstanding note of primitive Christianity was a joyous 
trust in the Supreme Being. The whole effect of Christ’s 
life and career had been that the faith and hope of the men 
who accepted him was set, in a new confidence, upon God. 
What we first need to know about God is his disposition and 
attitude towards us: is the Power behind and above the world 
friendly to us or is He not? The answer of the Apostles’ 
Creed to this question is the one word, ‘Father.’ This word 
at once suggests that God is bound to us by ties that are 
unbreakable and which lay upon him certain obligations. It 
suggests that a man should find in God a certain element of the 
unalterable, a permanent ground for confidence. Unhappily 
the word “Father” may suggest to us anything from mere 
physical paternity to a relationship of the highest ethical and 
disciplinary value. In us, the idea of Fatherhood, unstable 
in equilibrium, is ever apt to degenerate into a thought of 
indulgent and ministrant kindness and even of a weak slavery 
to children’s needs and caprices. But Christ’s recorded words 
show us how careful he was to surround the thought of the 
divine Fatherhood by safeguards of reverence: ‘I thank thee, 
Father, Lord of heaven and earth’: ‘My Father’; ‘O righteous 
Father’—such phrases abundantly attest his own thought of 
God and plainly indicate the attitude he would have us take 
tO, God, * 


The large use that is made of this ancient creed throughout 
the Christian Church attests its popularity and its persistence. 
Familiarity with its phraseology, brought about by its frequent 
recital in public worship, has endeared it to all people, even 
to those who in sober judgment think that some statements 
in it might have been advantageously omitted—or at least 
could be advantageously omitted for our day. There are four 
clauses to which objection has long been made, namely, “Born 
of the Virgin Mary,” “He descended into hell,” “the holy 


1See Chapter I in Dr. Ross’s volume, titled “The God We iorast.. 
for the full elucidation of this thought. 


45 4 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


‘Catholic’ church,” and the “resurrection of the body.” The 
objection to the second and third of these is not so much 
to the fact stated as to the phraseology;-the objection that 
has been raised by some to the first and fourth is to the facts 
stated. 

As to the “descent into hell,’ the objection is that the 
English word “hell”? which was long a true rendering of the 
Hebrew “‘sheol” and of the Greek “hades,’’ meaning the place 
of departed spirits, regardless of whether they are good or 
bad, has long since, in popular usage, lost that meaning and 
has come to mean the place to which only the wicked go at 
death. This fact has led to the omission of the phrase from 
the creed as used in some Churches. 

The word “catholic” means properly “pertaining to the 
whole Christian Church,” but the Church of Rome has ap- 
propriated this word to itself, claiming to be the one and 
only body of believers that can be truly designated as the 
Church of Christ. It is simply a question as to whether this 
ancient, appropriate and expressive word that belongs to the 
Church universal should be surrendered to the Church of 
Rome. Some who think the word belongs to the whole 
Church, yet feel that its identification with the Roman Catholic 
Church has become so widespread and common that it is best 
to substitute it with another word or phrase of identical mean- 
ing; and by some churches this has been done. But others, 
and these constitute the majority of Christian people, believe 
that this cherished Christian word should not be surrendered to 
the Papacy—that such a concession to an arrogant and unwar- 
ranted claim of monopolising the Church of Christ is not for 
a moment to be thought of. Many Protestants feel that, if- 
there is any branch of the Christian church that is not “catho- 
lic’ in the true meaning of that Christian word, it is the 
Church of Rome. And what does “Catholic” mean? Let Dr. 
Alexander White of Scotland answer the question: “The 
true Catholic is the well-read, open-minded, hospitable-hearted, 
spiritually exercised Christian. He is of no sect and no school. 
He belongs to all sects, and all sects belong to him. So far 
as they have any portion of divine truth in their keeping, 


THROUGH THE CREEDS TO GOD 455 


or any evidence of divine grace in their walk and conversation, 
they all are his fellow-communicants and his brethren. How 
rich such men are in truth and love and hope! For all things 
are theirs. All men and all books and all Churches—whether 
Paul, or John, or Augustine, or Athanasius, or Dante, or 
Behmen; or Luther, or Calvin, or Hooker, or Taylor, or 
Knox, or Rutherford, or Bunyan, or Butler, or Edwards, or 
Chalmers, or Newman, or Spurgeon, all are theirs.” 

It was in “An Appreciation of John Henry Newman,” 
the ex-Protestant and later Roman Catholic prelate, author 
of “Lead, Kindly Light,” that Dr. White wrote these words 
of generous recognition of the Catholic Cardinal’s place in 
the one great and true Catholic Church of Christ; but this 
was in spite of, not because of, his espousal of the Romish 
faith. Those who, whatever their church and creed, unchurch 
all: followers of Christ who are not identified with and obedi- 
ent to their own ecclesiastical organisation, and refuse to co- 
operate in Christian service with any but their own sect, 
will be the last who can consistently qualify as “Catholics” 
under the true meaning of the word. ‘True “catholicity” in 
spirit and in Christian service can alone make any church or 
any creed a luminous and inviting pathway to God. 

If a Creed is to be made a bond of unity in the Church 
in the largest way, many feel that it should contain only those 
facts and statements of truth that are cardinal and fundamen- 
tal to the Christian faith. Is the virgin-birth of Christ such 
a fact or truth? Many say yes, but many others who believe 
in it themselves as a fact do not believe that it should be 
classed among the facts essential to faith in a divine Christ. 
They believe that a fact of this kind in the life of our Lord 
which is mentioned only by Matthew and Luke, and is never 
referred to at all by the two writers (John and Paul) to whom 
we owe nearly three-fourths of the New Testament—and 
which not a few devout Christian believers doubt—should not 
be imposed upon any one as a sime qua non of a true and 

saving faith in Christ. “Christ the Son of God,” “Christ and 
him crucified,” and ‘Christ and the resurrection’’—these are 
the articles of Christian faith, as it pertains to Christ, which 


456 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


the New Testament writers emphasise as cardinal.* As one 

who believes most profoundly in the truth and abiding value 

of the Apostles’ Creed, and who also believes in the virgin- 

birth, Dr. G. A. Johnston Ross yet protests against the exalta- 

tion of this fact in our Lord’s life into a cardinal doctrine of 

the Christian faith: “It is the grossest travesty upon the posi- 

tion of the Christian Church to say that it demands of its mem- 

bers belief in the virgin-birth as though that were the basis of 

the Christian faith. The virgin-birth was no part of the earli- 

est known presentation of the Gospel either by our Lord or by 
his Apostles.” . .. The creed first sets before us with an 
awed impressiveness the person of Jesus—The Christ, God’s 
only Son, our Lord’—and only then does it go on to speak 
of the mode of his coming. It behooves us to observe that 
same order: first, let the personal greatness of the Christ 
tell fully on our minds—and then in the matter of his birth 

into our life, as well as in the matter of his resurrection, which 
was his birth into a yet higher human life, we shall be cleansed 
of a priort dogmatism.” But these words need to be supple- 
mented by others from Dr. Ross: “One wonders that any 
man or woman of pure mind, haunted by the glory of the 

Christ, could read, say, the first two chapters of St. Luke and 
note how steeped they are in the glory of God’s prior dis- 
cipline of his people, and how holy, elevated, reticent and 

virgin-chaste ‘the story is, without becoming convinced that 

in the deepest sense the story is true, and meant to convey 

the truth.” ° In thus writing Dr. Ross expresses the faith and 

the feeling of many others besides himself. 

No one familiar with modern Christian thought is unaware 
of the fact that many Christian people do not believe in the. 


1It is a significant fact, in its bearing on present-day controversies, that 
in neither of the two official creeds of the early Church, the Nicene and 
the Athanasian, was there any declaration of faith in the Virgin birth. 
See J. F. Bethune-Baker’s ‘The Faith of the Apostles’ Creed,” p. 66. 

2Thus also Dr. Bruce: “The histories of the infancy in Matthew and 
Luke do not belong to the original Synoptical tradition. They are a later 
addition prefixed to the evangelic story.” See “Apologetics,” pp. 408-409. 
Nevertheless, like Dr. Ross, Dr. Bruce believes the account of the virgin 
birth is true no matter when it was added. 

3“The God We Trust,” pp. 74-76. 


THROUGH THE CREEDS TO GOD 457 


resurrection of the physical body. Others who do believe in 
it regard it as in no way essential to the Christian doctrine 
of the immortality of the human soul. Both of these classes 
of believers regard it as unfortunate that a creed which is 
meant to be of universal use should contain any statement of 
faith to which devout Christian believers, whatever their type 
of theological opinion, can reasonably object. They feel that 
no statement on a non-essential and disputed doctrine like 
this should be in a creed that is to be used in a ritualistic way 
and recited by a public congregation. If any statement is 
to be made on this point in the creed, they feel that it should 
be expressed in the Scripture words “the resurrection of the 
dead,” rather than “the resurrection of the body,” seeing that 
the former phrase, as used by Christ in his reply to the Sad- 
ducees, is capable of being interpreted as teaching the con- 
tinued life of the spirit after death without any implication 
as to the resurrection of the fleshly body that is laid in the 
grave. But our concern here and now is not primarily as to 
whether the resurrection of the physical body is a fact or not, 
but wholly as to whether it is a help or a hindrance to a creed 
as a guide-book to God to have in it a statement of this kind. 
If it is a fundamental feature of the Christian doctrine of 
immortality, it is proper and right that it should go into 
the creed; but, if it is not a fundamental, and is not believed 
by many Christians in our day, the creed would be most useful 
by its omission.* 


2. The Athanasian Creed 


Let us imagine, if we can, some one reading to Christ the 
Athanasian Creed with its multiplied metaphysical declarations 
and statements concerning God and Himself and the Holy 
spirit and challenging his approval and confirmation of these 
declarations. Here is something of what they would read to 
him: 

1 Among modern-minded theologians who hold that the resurrection 


of the physical body is an essential part of the Christian doctrine of 
immortality is Dr. A. B. Bruce. See his ‘Apologetics,’ pp. 60, 120. 


458 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


“Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary 
that he hold the catholic faith; which faith, except every one 
do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish 
everlastingly. And the catholic faith is this: That we wor- 
ship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither con- 
founding the persons nor dividing the substance. For there is 
one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of 
the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son 
and of the Holy Ghost is all one: the glory equal, the majesty 
co-eternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such 
is the Holy Ghost. The Father is uncreated, incomprehensible, 
eternal, almighty; so is the Son and so the Holy Ghost; and 
yet there are not three uncreated, three incomprehensibles, 
three eternals, and three almightys, but only one God... .* 
The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is 
God; and yet there are not three Gods, but one God. So like- 
wise the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord and the Holy Ghost 
is Lord; and yet there are not three Lords, but one Lord. 
. . . The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten. 
The Son is of the Father alone, not made, nor created, but 
begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son, 
neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding. .. . 
And in this Trinity none is afore or after other; none is 
greater or less than another. But the whole three persons are 
co-eternal together, and coequal. So that in all things, as is 
aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is 
to be worshipped. He, therefore, that will be saved must 
thus think of the Trinity. Furthermore, it is necessary to 
everlasting salvation that he also believe rightly the incarna- 
tion of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right faith is that 
we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son 
of God, is God and man: God of the substance of the Father, _ 
begotten before the worlds; and man of the substance of his 
mother, born in the world. . . . Equal to the Father as touch- 
ing his Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching his 
manhood. Who although he be God and man, yet he is not 
two, but one Christ. One, not by conversion of the Godhead 
into flesh, but by taking of the manhood into God; one alto- 
gether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person. 
. . . This is the catholic faith which except a man believe 
faithfully, he cannot be saved.” 


1 We abbreviate the original but in no way change the meaning. 


THROUGH THE CREEDS TO GOD 459 


While this creed bears the name of Athanasius, it is not 
thought by church historians that he wrote it. It was at first 
designated as “the Catholic faith.” Among the theological con- 
troversies of the fourth century concerning Christ, Athanasius 
held that Christ was of the same substance (homo-ousios) 
with the Father; the semi-Arians held that he was of like 
substance (homot-ousios) with the Father; the Arians held 
that he was of different substance (heterousios) from the 
Father. The view of Athanasius prevailed and came to be 
acceped as the orthodox catholic doctrine, and it is that inter- 
pretation of Christ’s person which finds expression in this 
creed. This fact doubtless led to its being called by his 
name. Among the earliest, bitterest and longest doctrinal 
controversies that ever took place in the history of the Chris- 
tian Church was that which centred in the question as to 
whether the Greek word that defined the relation of Christ’s 
nature to that of the Father should be spelt with or without 
the letter “i1”’—homo-ousia or homot-ousia, ‘“‘sameness of 
substance” or “likeness of substance.’”’ The former became 
(and remains to this day) the watch-word of catholic ortho- 
doxy. The bitterness of this controversy doubtless accounts 
for the strong “damnatory clauses’ of the Athanasian creed. 
It may not be generally known that this creed, which we now 
read as a literary and theological curiosity, is still, in spite of 
these objectionable clauses, officially in force not only in the 
Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic Churches, but in the 
Church of England also, though it is omitted from the canons 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America. 

That it was in the moulds of these early historic creeds that 
the once plastic doctrine of Deity now designated as the 
Trinity, took the fixed form it now bears, is a matter of his- 
tory. This term, the “Trinity,” and the conception of Deity 
for which it stands, may be said to represent the Christian 
doctrine of God as interpreted in the terms of metaphysical 
and philosophical theology. But while the “Trinity” may be 
recognised as the most characteristic theological term for desig- 
nating the Christian doctrine of God, and while it may be 
conceded that all these minutely described distinctions in the 


460 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Godhead which are brought out in such manifold detail in the 
Athanasian creed are involved in our present doctrine of the 
Trinity, nothing could show how different are our thoughts 
about God from the thoughts of the Nicene and post-Nicene 
age than the reading of this creed. It is utterly inconceivable 
that any representative body of Christian men who should be 
called on in our day to draw up in brief form a statement of 
the fundamental facts and features of our present Christian 
conception of God,—called on to do this in a manner that 
would help men in our day to believe in God, and draw them 
to his worship and service—it is inconceivable that their work 
would find expression in credal statements even remotely re- 


sembling this ancient Confession of Catholic faith. And yet. 


if that creed is what men needed in that day to help them to 
interpret God and believe in him, it is exactly what they ought 
to have had prepared for them. And we must believe that 
a creed that should have been so widely recognised as ex- 
pressing “the catholic faith’ of that age, and that was given 
the name of the great and honoured exponent of orthodoxy 
in that age, was indeed surely the kind of message that was 
needed then. All that we are saying is that that is not the 
way to interpret and present God to our generation. 


3. The Westminster Confession of Faith 


(1) The Providential Mission of Calvinism 


No one familiar with the history of Protestantism can fail 
to recognise and acknowledge the great contribution which 
Calvinism has made to modern Christianity. To offset the 


arrogant claims and pretensions and practices of the Church - 


of Rome in the sixteenth century, which led to the reaction 
under Martin Luther, a theology was needed that had granite 
in its body, grey matter in its brain, and iron in its blood. 
Calvinism furnished these needed ingredients in its dogmatic 


theology. Reactions as a rule go to extremes. The swinging 
pendulum, let loose at one extreme, cannot stop until it has 
gone to another. To meet and offset the Papal claim to sov-_ 


ereignty over Church and State as well as over the individual — 





THROUGH THE CREEDS TO GOD 461 


conscience, Protestantism set up the Sovereignty of Almighty 
God and the infallibility of a divinely inspired and inerrant 
Bible. The momentum and impact of Calvinism upon minds 
emancipated from the thraldom of Romish authority and 
superstition was so great that the freedmen did not see, and 
did not want to see, that the interpretation of God in terms 
of Sovereignty which characterised the theology of Protestant- 
ism, was pressed too far—to the very borders of absolute 
despotism. The theology of Calvinism had so much that was 
true in it that the system as a whole grew and gained wide- 
spread influence, in spite of what we now regard as serious 
error in its interpretation of the Divine Being. It is the error 
that is coupled with or clothed in truth that is most difficult 
to detect and correct. We are now wondering how it is that 
such exaggerations of divine Sovereignty and such limitations 
and discriminations in the divine love as Calvinism attributed 
to God could have so long dominated the theology of the 
Church. One explanation is found in the clear and strong 
credal expression that was given to this system of theological 
thought; and the strongest of all these formal statements of 
Calvinistic thought is that found in the Westminster Confes- 
sion of Faith. It has been called the Gibraltar of Calvinism. 


(2) The God of Calvinism 


It was a scholarly and catholic-minded Presbyterian, the 
late eminent historian, Dr. Philip Schaff, who wrote as fol- 
lows concerning the Calvinistic doctrine of God: 


“The scholastic Calvinists of the seventeenth century 
mounted the Alpine heights of eternal decrees with intrepid 
courage, and revelled in the reverential contemplations of the 
awful majesty of God, which required the damnation of the 
great mass of sinners, including untold millions of heathen and 
infants, for the manifestation of his terrible justice. Inside 
the circle of the elect all was bright and delightful in the 
sunshine of infinite mercy, but outside all was darker than 
midnight. This system of doctrine commands our respect, 
for it has produced the most earnest and heroic Christians; 
but it is, nevertheless, austere and repulsive. It glorifies the 


462 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


justice of God above his mercy; it savours more of the Old 
Testament than of the New, and is better at home on Mount 
Sinai than on Calvary. “God is love,’ and love is the only key 
that can unlock the deepest meaning of his words and works.” 


But the emphasis in the faith and preaching of the present- 
day followers of Calvin, as of all other types of theology, is 
upon the Fatherhood and love of God rather than upon his 
sovereignty and justice, upon the largeness and graciousness 
of Christ’s atoning work for all mankind rather than upon 
the limitation and partiality of redemption, upon the moral 
free agency and responsibility of man rather than upon the 
unconditional election and reprobation of men before they are 
born. “The five knotty points of Calvinism,” says Dr. Schaff, 
“have lost their point and have been smoothed off by God’s 
own working in the history of the Church.” 

But if this quotation from Dr. Schaff seems to belong to 
a past generation too remote to represent modern thought, 
let us turn to the last session of the General Assembly of the 
Free Church of Scotland and quote from a report’ of the 
address delivered before that body by Dr. Garvie, the author 
of many well known volumes: 


“Dr. Garvie, who fills a more important place with each 
year, spoke with characteristic and welcome frankness. When 
it is remembered that the Free Churches have within their 
borders thinkers from the extreme left of theology to the ex- 
treme right, it will be seen that Dr. Garvie did valuable service 
in claiming freedom for those who, with him, believe in the 
progressive revelation in the Bible, and have escaped from 
the blight of Calvinism. On second adventist doctrines he | 
spoke words which will not be without their interest in Amer- 
ica. ‘Why I myself do not believe in the second adventist 
doctrine, as it is now being widely preached, is that I believe 
so profoundly and so unreservedly in the sufficiency of Jesus 
Christ as Saviour and Lord that I cannot believe that the 
best God can do is to wind up his world as a bankrupt con- 
cern. I believe with all my heart that God would never have 
created a race that he could not redeem, and that Jesus Christ 


1See “The Christian Century,” April 3, 1924. 


THROUGH THE CREEDS TO GOD 463 


is great enough to be the world’s Redeemer. As I have already 
indicated, universalism goes beyond what we can confidently 
affirm. But that God will do his utmost to save in Jesus 
Christ, that our Christian faith compels us, compels me at 
least, to believe.’ ” 


(3) Revision by Reinterpretation 


The modern Church has witnessed more than one attempt 
to revise the Westminster Confession, the Thirty-nine Arti- 
cles and other Calvinistic statements of faith. The serious 
problem that has confronted the revisers of the Westminster 
Confession has been how they might get the doctrines of the 
loving Fatherhood of God, the unlimited atonement of Christ 
and the moral free agency of man into the creed and yet 
retain Calvinism in its cardinal and distinctive features. It 
simply cannot be done. To hold to unconditional election and 
reprobation in eternity by the Divine will, and at the same 
time believe in and hold to the three doctrines just named is, 
intellectually, an impossibility. 

That these three doctrines have long been demanded by 
the advocates for a revision of the Westminster Confession 
may be shown by two quotations from eminent Presbyterian 
divines. In a public discussion of the subject of revision that 
took place a few years ago in the General Assembly of the 
Presbyterian Church, Dr. MacCracken, then Vice Chancellor 
of New York University, said: 


“There was a certain choice given us by the President of 
Princeton, in his recent paper, between Augustine and Comte, 
Jonathan Edwards and John Stuart Mill—if I rightly recall 
the names—at any rate, between Christian necessitarians and 
anti-Christian necessitarians. I respectfully decline to choose. 
I am like the coloured man who, when told by his preacher, 
‘There is a broad road that leads down to destruction, and a 
narrow road that leads up to perdition,’ said, “Then this col- 
oured man will take to the woods.’ I betake myself to the free 
territory of a self-determined will. I leave the explanation 
of exactly how God renews my will to the unexplained and 
inexplicable mysteries of the Almighty. I say with Dr. Hodge, 


464 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


the younger, in his Philadelphia lecture delivered shortly before 
his death: ‘The need of the hour is not to emphasise fore- 
ordination, but to unite with our Arminian brethren in putting 
all emphasis and concentrating all attention on the vital fact 
of human freedom.’ ”’ 


Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst, in the same discussion, said: 


“If now we are going to retain this preterition idea in our 
Confession, then we must be true to it in our preaching as 
Presbyterian ministers and on occasion declare it in all frank- 
ness. We shall be obliged to address our congregations some- 
what after this manner: My friends, I am sorry to say it, but 
as a Calvinist Presbyterian I am bound to say it, that Christ did 
not die for all. There is a certain amount of fatalism in the © 
case. Some men are damned, and not only that, but congeni- 
tally damned, damned before they are born, hated of God even 
in the moment of conception.” 


“Oh, no!” said Dr. W. M. Paxton, interrupting the speaker 
at this point. 


“My good Brother Paxton says, ‘Oh, no.’ Well, it is a pretty 
hard way of stating the case, and I would hardly have ventured 
to put it in this way 1f I had not heard Dr. Paxton’s exposition 
of the matter last Monday afternoon. But the story of Jacob 
and Esau, as interpreted by the hyper-Calvinists, means all 
that, when you tell the whole thing out in flat-footed English. 
Now if I concluded that that was a Scriptural doctrine, and 
that salvation was not absolutely free to every creature, I would 
tear my Geneva gown to shreds, and rip up my Bible into 
paper rags before another Sabbath, and my elders and deacons 
and all my Church membership, I believe, would stand by me.” 


At the session of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian 
Church which some years ago welcomed back to its folds the 
Cumberland Presbyterian Church, the following resolutions, 
which were offered by an ex-Moderator, Dr. J. D. Moffatt, were 
adopted as a supplementary declaration concerning the belief 
which is now expected of those who join the Presbyterian 
Church: “(1) That in the Presbyterian Church no acceptance 


THROUGH THE CREEDS TO GOD 465 


of the doctrines of the Church is required of any communi- 
cant beyond personal faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God 
and the Saviour of the world and sincere acceptance of him 
as Lord and Master. (2) That ministers, ruling elders, and 
deacons, in expressing approval of the Westminster Confession 
of Faith, are required to assent only to the system of doctrine 
established therein, and not to every particular statement. 
(3) It is further declared to be no longer allowable to interpret 
that system of doctrine in any fatalistic sense.” Of course 
there are many “particular statements” to which the Cumber- 
land Presbyterians will not give their assent. This third dec- 
laration is remarkable in that it concedes that the Westminster 
Confession has not only been interpreted in a “‘fatalistic 
sense” in the past, but such interpretation has been allowed. 
Is it surprising that an increasing number of Presbyterians 
have been calling for a Confession of Faith which shall not 
need any supplementary declaration forbidding readers to in- 
terpret it in a “fatalistic sense” ? 

_ Most interesting is the answer which the General Assembly 
of the Free Church of Scotland has given to this last question 
by preparing and submitting to their people a new statement 
of Christian faith for their calm consideration. It is indeed 
a clear and remarkably satisfactory statement of Christian 
faith, The fact that it emanates from a Church historically 
famous as defenders of Calvinism, and yet omits all the ob- 
jectionable features of Calvinistic theology so thoroughly that 
Arminian Methodists could without embarrassment subscribe 
to most if not all of its statements, gives promise of an earlier 
unity and agreement in matters of faith than had hitherto been 
thought possible. 


4. The Thirty-nine Articles 


The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, from 
which the Twenty-five Articles of the Methodist Church were 
taken, were written in 1551 by Cranmer (probably), being 
approved by King Edward and others in authority. As first 
drawn up they were forty-two in number; but after changes 
by Bishop Parker and further alterations which reduced the 


466 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


number to thirty-nine, they were adopted by the English Con- 
vocation in 1562-63; but not until the Convocation of 1571 
did they receive their present final form. These Articles have 
been storm centres of controversy more than once in the past 
hundred years. It is with their statements concerning God 
that we are here and now especially concerned. 

The first article concerning the Divine Being reads as fol- 
lows: ‘“There is but one living and true God, without body, 
parts or passions; of infinite power, wisdom and goodness; 
the Maker and Preserver of all things both visible and in- 
visible; and in unity of this God-head there are three per- 
sons, of one substance, power and eternity, the Father, the 
Son and the Holy Ghost.” The most superficial reading of 
this article cannot fail to reveal the absence of any mention 
of what we now regard as the two most distinguishing attri- 
butes of the Divine Being, his holiness and love. Nor does 
this article set forth what Christ made most conspicuous in 
his revelation of God, namely, his sustaining the relation of 
Father to all men, for the divine Fatherhood mentioned has 
reference wholly to his personality and place in the Trinity 
of the Godhead, his relation to the second and third Persons 
of the Trinity. Whatever an article of faith concerning God 
contains or omits, if it is to meet the needs of our day, it 
must not only mention but emphasise the three great truths 
about God that are conspicuously absent here—his holiness, 
his love and his precious relation to men as the heavenly 
Father. 

Consider, again, the conception of God contained in the 
statement of the doctrine of atonement that is found in the 
last part of the second Article: “Christ truly suffered, was 
crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile his Father to us, and 
to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for the 
actual sins of men.” Now this Article, in making the main 
purpose of Christ’s sufferings and death to be to appease the 
wrath of God and reconcile him to men, represents a doctrine 
of atonement that has few defenders in the modern Church, 
which believes, with Paul, that God is now, and has ever been, 
“In Christ reconciling the world unto himself.” In other 


THROUGH THE CREEDS TO GOD 467 


words the atoning work of Christ is designed to reveal the 
love of God and not the hate and wrath of God. The men 
who wrote this Article evidently did not believe in the sover- 
eignty of divine love among the attributes of God. If it be 
true that the necessity of atonement is found in the justice of 
God, it is also and even more true, if one truth can be truer 
than another, that the origin of atonement is found in the love 
of God, and the method of atonement in the wisdom of God. 
The statement of the doctrine of atonement that finds expres- 
sion in this Article in the judgment of many, unduly exagger- 
ates the justice and wrath of God as compared with his wis- 
dom and love. The grandest expression of love for a sinful 
world that a Father can make is to give his Son for their salva- 
tion; the grandest expression of love that a Son can make is 
to give himself in voluntary self-sacrifice for the world’s 
redemption. These are the potent and precious truths about 
the atonement as related to God and man that are everywhere 
emphasised in the New Testament, and the Church of to-day 
is calling for a creed that shall contain a statement of the 
doctrine of atonement which, while neglecting no truth, will 
keep the emphasis where the New Testament places it, on the 
love of God. 


It 


NEED FOR NEW CREDAL STATEMENTS OF 
CHRISTIAN TH ALD Et 


“I can wish the Churches no better fate,’ says Sir Henry 
Jones in beginning his recent lectures on the Gifford Founda- 
tion at the University of Glasgow, “‘than that henceforth they 
shall regard the articles of their creeds as objects of unsparing 
intellectual enquiry. Enquiry not only establishes the truth 
of the main elements of the doctrines which the Churches 
inculcate, but it transmutes and enriches their meaning.” 

Another distinguished Scotchman,* in a still more recent 


1 There are few things more notable in modern theological thought than 
the rebound against creeds and against high Calvinism that is so manifest 
in the utterances of present-day Scotch theologians. Scotland was once 
the headquarters of English Calvinism and the strongest champion of the 


468 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


volume, has uttered words of similar import. In his volume 
titled ‘Religion and Modern Thought,” Dr. George Galloway, 
Principal of St. Mary’s College, University of St. Andrews, 
says: | 


“Tt would mean a gain for religion if some of the old 
metaphysical and legal notions, as well as pre-scientific ideas, 
which have found a place in our Confessional systems, were 
officially relegated to the background. For they belong to a 
vanished world; they cannot be made to live again; and they 
hinder rather than help faith. On the other hand, along with 
this liberating process, there must go an earnest endeavour to 
set what is essential in the foreground of religious faith. The 
things which really matter most must receive an added empha- 
sis. In this we shall be guided by keeping steadily in mind the 
vital and enduring elements of the Christian experience. This 
experience has its centre and living ground in the revelation 
of God in Christ, and, despite all the chance and change of 
human things, and through all the passing fashions of an 
ageing world, it has maintained itself. Here is the living 
core of our Christian faith, and the doctrines in which that 
experience is enshrined will remain an abiding inheritance of 
the Christian Church.” 


1. New Bottles for the New Wine 


In view of the foregoing facts we cannot wonder that the 
late Dr. A. B. Bruce, of Scotland, expressed himself on this 
subject in the following language, which is even truer.of our 
day than it was of his: 


“What to do with our creeds has become for all the Churches 
a burning question. That these creeds, centuries old, no longer 
express perfectly, or even approximately, the living faith of the 
Church, is being frankly acknowledged on every side. The 
free expression of the faith and spiritual life of former genera- 


type of orthodoxy embodied in the Westminster Confession of Faith. 
Now there is no country where modern thought has, unchallenged, freer 
and stronger expression than in Scotland, much of it being critical of tra- 
ditional Scotch Calvinism. The reader cannot fail to note how many 
Scotchmen are quoted as speaking in favour of creed revision. 


THROUGH THE CREEDS TO GOD 469 


tions, they have become a bondage to the spirit and a snare 
to the conscience.” 


He thinks what is needed is a “return to the Gospels and 
to the Christianity of Christ,’ and that ‘‘a fresh intuition of 
Christ and a new religious life that would flow from it” would 
result in a “fresh formulation of Christian belief, bearing an 
entirely different stamp from that of the historical Protestant 
confessions.” 

Professor James Simpson, the successor of Henry Drum- 
mond in the Free Church College of Edinburgh, is authority 
for the statement that to-day the Scotch Church generally and 
as a whole occupies the theological position held by the men 
whom a generation ago it charged with heresy. “Jesus Christ,” 
says Professor Simpson, “showed us what is eternally true in 
the heart of God. But the way we think of God and his 
work and purpose in the world must be modified to some 
extent, and is richly increased by the revelation which he has 
made of himself in science and in history. Each generation 
has a right to demand that its knowledge and reinterpretation 
of God shall be stated in the light of the new knowledge that 
that generation has attained. It is only when there is an 
attempt to insist that the forms and categories of truth that 
dominated the thinking of a past generation shall be held as 
absolute for the new generation that difficulty arises. The 
result of this attitude of freedom on the part of the Scotch 
Church is that the young people are rallying around the Church 
as they had not done previously.”’ * 

Another influential leader and outspoken thinker of English 
Christianity who feels that the traditional creeds and inherited 
dogmas of the Church are a yoke around the neck and an 
impediment to progress in the thought and work of the Church 
is Dean Inge, whose “Outspoken Essays’? and “Confessio 
Fidei” are among the most thought-provoking and stimulating 
of recent theological books. He regards “the immobility of 


1 Professor Simpson is best known as the author of the two volumes 
titled “The Spiritual Interpretation of Nature’ and “Man and the Attain- 
ment of Immortality,’ works which interpret nature, man and God from 
the point of view of theistic evolution. 


470 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


dogma” as one of the gravest of the dangers confronting the 
Church. It is, he thinks, a peril to honest thinking and tends 
to produce intellectual dishonesty in the Church. Traditional 
orthodoxy ‘outrages our sense of truth and honesty by de- 
manding our assent to scientific errors which were exploded 
centuries ago.” The “gloomy dean,’ as he is called, doubtless 
exaggerates the dangers that threaten the modern Church from 
the trammels of traditionalism, but it is well to quote his 
words, for he is not alone in believing that a reinterpretation 
of Christianity in larger and more liberal terms and a restate- 
ment of Christian faith with a new emphasis upon the great 
ethical and spiritual doctrines of religion are called for in 
our day. He writes: 


“Tf ever a Church alienates from itself not only the best 
intellect, but the best conscience of the nation so that these 
forces no longer exert any pressure upon its action, the descent 
to Avernus is easy and the return very difficult. Its rulers 
are led by the real or supposed necessity of representing and 
conciliating a less and less respectable clientele, and the public 
ceases to look for wisdom or guidance from the official spokes- 
men of the Church. If our leaders were wise in their genera- 
tion they would make a great effort to check the progressive 
alienation of vigorous and independent thought from Chris- 
tianity. They would have the courage to disregard the preju- 
dices of the church-going public, and would appeal to the con- 
science and intelligence of a wider circle.” 


New creeds have always come in connection with forward 
movements in faith; and, though every inch in the advance has 
to be fought for, new heights once gained are always held. 
There is no instance in the history of religious thought where 
outgrown and discarded conceptions of religious truths are 
restored in later creeds. This is because reinterpretations in 
religion seek to extract out of the old whatever elements of 
truth are in it, and these are incorporated into the new state- 
ments of truth. This is progressive conservatism, which pre- 
serves and perpetuates the truth of the past, as opposed to re- 


THROUGH THE CREEDS TO GOD 471 


version, which seeks to revive and restore that in the past 
which has become obsolete and can come no more to life again. 
In all these creeds and confessions of faith that have registered 
forward movements in the Church there have been perishable 
elements of wood, hay and stubble, but there have also been 
elements of gold and silver that represent the imperishable 
truths of faith, which, when tried as by fire, are found to 
be indestructible. These permanent elements in religion con- 
stitute the inner mind and ever-growing spirit of Christian 
faith, while the mutable elements represent the outer body, 
always disintegrating and yet unceasingly renewed. How much 
better it is for mortals such as we are to have liberty in think- 
ing and freedom in believing, as God in his wisdom has given 
us, than to have been given at the start an absolutely complete 
and accurate and authoritative creed, unchangeable in every 
deiail because of its fixedness and exactness which left nothing 
to be thought out differently. A human history abounding in 
heresies and conflicting creeds, each contending that it is the 
true faith first delivered to the saints, is infinitely preferable 
to a faith as fixed and unalterable as the multiplication table. 
How much better than credal immutability and finality is it 
for us to have endless opportunities for truth-seeking, and 
be in a world full of variety, where as a man thinketh in his 
heart so is he, and where according to the measure of one’s 
faith is life made rich or poor in the things of greatest value. 
God has wisely left us free, within limits duly imposed by 
reason, to determine what we shall believe even about him- 
self. Because he has done this, Personality, both his and 
ours, becomes richer and infinitely more significant than if our 
minds had been made to fit immutable intellectual moulds and 
that would be the case if our conception of Deity were de- 
termined by a kind of astronomical mathematics or logical 
syllogism that should formulate and fix every detail of thought 
concerning him. The fact that theology is a speculative and 
not a fixed and immutable science carries in it the promise and 
inspiration of endless progress in man’s efforts to understand 
and interpret the God whom he worships. 


472 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


2. Old and New Ideas of Creeds 


A Christian creed ought to be a real living force in guid- 
ing unbelievers, in educating and building up believers, and 
in evangelising the world. The Church creeds, however (ex- 
cepting the one simple, brief Apostles’ Creed), have fallen into 
disrepute not only with men of the world but to a large extent 
with members of the Church also. The popular conception 
of a church creed is that it is a series of theological state- 
ments that are dry and cold and hard, something scholastic 
and skeletonic, antiquated and obsolete, uninteresting, lifeless, 
incapable of stirring the mind to think great and holy thoughts, 
or the heart to aspire after that which is lofty and divine, some- 
thing chiefly useful for preventing heresy and safeguarding or- 
thodoxy. These venerable creeds that now seem so dead were 
once an expression of the living thought of believers and filled 
a large place in the conscious life of the Church. But they 
belong now to the history of Christian doctrine and have little 
to do with the conscious thought and life of the Church to-day. 
The time is coming, however, if it be not already here, when 
a new expression of the faith, experience, purpose, and life 
of the Church will be demanded and be forthcoming. No one 
familiar with the history of the Church can fail to recognise the 
power and persistence of creeds. If they have been such in 
the past, they can be made such in the future. But, if a creed 
is to be a force working for truth and righteousness, it must 
be, whatever else it may or may not be, such a simple, clear 
and strong statement of the truth concerning God that men 
will find in it a luminous pathway for pilgrims travelling 
through a sin-darkened world. 

The old idea of a creed as something to bind men’s faith 
and furnish a test by which heresy can be determined and 
condemned is largely a thing of the past. The new creed 
is positive, not negative; something to help, not to hinder; 
to free, not to bind; inclusive, not exclusive; educational and 
progressive, not holding down and back; evangelistic, and not 
scholastic; irenic, and not polemic. The Church needs a state- 
ment of faith that it can take to thinking and truth-seeking 


THROUGH THE CREEDS TO GOD 473 


men and say, not “Here is something you shall believe,” but 
rather ‘“‘Here is something so reasonable and Scriptural and 
true that if you will only read and examine it you will be- 
heve it.’ 

If the time ever comes when a Church holds on to a creed 
for any other reason than that it is a true expression of its 
present living and abiding faith, then it is no longer an expres- 
sion of faith, even though it be called such—it becomes then 
an impediment to progress, a source of decay and death and 
not of life and growth. A creed that is really believed does 
not need to be preserved by a law making it difficult or well- 
nigh impossible to alter it. 

Among the notable utterances of the moderator of a late 
session of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scot- 
land is the following: “The creed of the Church of the future 
will not be an assent to a form of words but consent to a way 
of life.” Just before his death the late Dr. John Watson 
(Ian Maclaren) said that one of the greatest needs of the 
‘modern Church is an ethical creed—a creed that will give an 
important place to a timely and well-worded declaration that 
will serve to show that the Church recognises its great mission 
in the world to be to make men, to make men by preaching 
a gospel that will regulate conduct, develop moral character, 
and thus produce noble types of manhood and womanhood. 
Christ has come into this world and established his Church 
for the one great purpose of making men. Doctrines and 
Church creeds and Churches themselves are worth just so 
much, in the last analysis, as they have power to make a noble 
type of manhood and womanhood. More than upon anything 
else the power of the Church to make men depends upon its 
interpretation of God as the heavenly Father and its insistence 
that men be like him in holiness and love. Fatherhood, holi- 
ness and love—let no interpretation of God that seeks to meet 
the religious needs of the day in which we live fail to give 
these most essential divine attributes a foremost place in its 
creed. 


\ 





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 


THROUGH DOUBT TO FAITH 


a cm 


bi 2 





CuarTerR EIGHTEEN 
THROUGH DOUBT TO FAITH 


I 
THEOREBATION OF BAITH TO REASON, AND RELIGION 


An important office of human reason in the realm of re- 
ligion is to forbid the human mind to believe anything until 
the proper evidence has been furnished. If faith is belief upon 
evidence, then there can be no real faith without the exercise 
of reason. We are justified by faith only, according to Paul, 
but faith is justified only by facts, by facts spiritual and in- 
visible as well as by facts physical and visible. Unless we 
were so constituted intellectually as to doubt until reasonable 
evidence is furnished, the human mind could be easily imposed 
upon in matters of faith. To doubt at the right place and for 
the right cause is the best cure for doubt, and to believe at 
the wrong place and on insufficient grounds is the surest road 
to scepticism. To doubt things that ought to be doubted is 
the surest road to.a rational faith in things that ought to be 
believed. 


1. The Office of Doubt in Religion 


In no sphere of human life does a man need to be pro- 
tected against error and credulity so much as in religion. 
Sometimes to find the real and true God one must needs doubt 
the traditional and prevailing doctrine concerning him. Chris- 
tian biography reveals the fact that many of the most influential 
leaders of religious thought have attained a satisfying faith 
only after having themselves passed through periods of doubt 
and scepticism born of honest and earnest inquiry. The men 
that have successfully fought their way through doubts are 
they who have thought their way through, through intellectual 


difficulties as to the truth of some of the accepted facts and 
477 


478 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


doctrines of the Church, and this sometimes in the face of 
much and severe criticism. Take men of the type of Fred- 
erick W. Robertson, Henry Drummond, Horace Bushnell and 
other “heretics of yesterday.” Many might be named who 
passed through painful periods of doubt and struggle in their 
search for God. It is men who have dared to doubt, and yet 
who, unwilling to stop there, have thought things through, 
who as a rule have won peace of mind for themselves and 
have shown a courage of conviction and of utterance that has 
inspired others with confidence in the sincerity and genuine- 
ness of their faith. 

They who honestly and frankly call in question things that 
ought to be doubted, and not only doubted but disputed and 
denied, may be the heretics of to-day, but they will be the 
orthodox leaders and heroes of faith for to-morrow. Think 
of what misinterpretations of God, amounting almost to cari- 
catures of him, have at times been included among the ac- 
cepted and orthodox doctrines of the Church in the past, at 
least of great sections of the Church—for example, that God’s 
decrees of reprobation consigned multitudes to hell before they 
were even born; and again, that Christ had appointed the 
Pope of Rome to be his vicegerent on earth and committed 
to his keeping the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and such 
like doctrines. Whenever such things are taught, is not the 
first step in the pathway to a true faith in God to doubt and 
deny whatever is so manifestly inconsistent with the true char- 
acter of the real and true God? And may it not be that there 
are in present popular conceptions of God and divine Provi- 
dence some ideas that are misleading and some conceptions 
which are really misconceptions; and if so, may it not be that 
only from and through those who dare to doubt and call in 
question such conceptions as are mixed with hurtful error 
will better interpretations and truer conceptions of God come 
to prevail. Thomas doubted, said St. Augustine, that we might 
not doubt. It may be a paradox, but it is nevertheless true, 
that doubt is one of the paths to faith in God. 

If there is ever to come any unity in the faith, any common 
agreement as to what “the truth as it is in Jesus” really is, 


THROUGH DOUBT TO FAITH 479 


it will come only after some have dared not only to believe, 
but to doubt, seeing that daring to believe sometimes manifests 
itself first in daring to doubt. But the doubt that is honest 
and truth-seeking, and that has rich hope of reward in its 
ultimate vindication is not to be recognised as a normal and 
permanent state of mind. It is a transitional state of mind 
that belongs to the earnest investigator and truth-seeker who 
is pressing his way out of darkness and uncertainty into light 
and into the assurance of faith. 

Of the different conceptions of God that prevail in the world, 
and how men have come to entertain these different views con- 
cerning the Divine Being, Dr. L. P. Jacks, Principal of Man- 
chester College, Oxford, has written the following words which 
cannot fail to commend themselves to every thoughtful reader 
as having much of truth in them. He warns us against attach- 
ing too much value to methods of proving God’s existence and 
character from and through supposed analogies to human re- 
lationships—such an argument for instance as that based on 
the resemblance between human and divine government. The 
true God, he thinks, is more likely to be found in doubting 
than in believing these arguments and analogies. In his 
volume titled “Religious Perplexities,” he says: 


“In all ages the attempt has been made to domesticate the 
idea of God to the secular purposes of individuals and of 
groups. If we examine the current forms of the idea we may 
observe the marks of this domesticating process at many points. 
For example, the idea of God as the sovereign potentate, gov- 
erning the universe under a system of iron law, the legislator 
of nature and the taskmaster of the soul, the rewarder of 
them that obey and the punisher of them that disobey, is 
plainly an idea borrowed from politics, the form of the idea 
most convenient to those who need God as an ally in the 
maintenance of law and order as they conceive them. 

“This does not prove the idea untrue to reality; it may 
conceivably be used as a strong argument to the contrary. 
At the same time it puts us on our guard, warning us to look 
out for other forms of ‘domestication’ which may be less in 
accord with essential truth than the one I have just mentioned. 
Certainly it is extremely difficult to find any form of the idea 


480 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


of God which has retained a purely spiritual or religious char- 
acter throughout the entire course of its history. Between the 
conception of Deity implied in the teachings of Jesus and 
the conception as it appears in ‘God save the King’ the dis- 
tance is immense; and few theologians I imagine would be so 
hardy or so patriotic as to affirm that the latter conception 
is nearer to the Divine Reality. 

“The theologian who takes up the proof of the existence of 
God should make it clear, both to himself and to his audience, 
at which end of this long line, which has not been one of ‘de- 
velopment,’ he lays the emphasis. Any proof of the existence 
of ‘the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’ would 
certainly prove the non-existence of the Being adumbrated in 
‘God save the King’; and vice versa. Which may be ex- 
panded into a more general proposition. Reasons given in 
favour of a spiritual or religious conception of God become 
less and less valid exactly in proportion as we approach its 
secular modifications; while reasons given in favour of these 
latter are worthless as proofs of the spiritual reality. Most 
of our difficulties in believing in God arise from the fact that 
God in our meaning of the term, is no longer ‘Spirit’ (as 
Jesus said), but Spirit shorn of its freedom and reduced to 
the dimensions of some human utility or purpose—that is, not 
‘opirit vatrall, 

“For these reasons I will venture to suggest to any one who 
is perplexed by doubts about the reality of God, not to trust 
the fortunes of his faith too unreservedly to the field of mere 
argumentation. If he does so he runs a serious risk of falling, 
without being aware of it, into one of the many grooves of 
thought, which alien interests have cut deep into the ground 
of theological controversy, leading the mind in a direction 
contrary to that in which spiritual reality is to be found. 
Neither let him deem himself an atheist because he cannot 
believe in the Deity adumbrated by ‘God save the King.’ 
Rather let him conceive it possible that God is speaking to 
him in his refusal to believe in that God. Let him seek God 
in the very heart of his doubts about God.” 


2. Dishonest Doubt 


“How long dost thou make us to doubt?” said the Jews to 
Christ, “If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly.” Some sceptics 


THROUGH DOUBT TO FAITH 481. 


try to make it appear, or at least to persuade themselves, that 
God, or the Bible, or the Christian religion, is responsible 
for their doubt. “How long dost thou make us to doubt ?’— 
thou art responsible for our doubt! The inference is that if 
Christ would tell them plainly, they would believe on him, 
and become his obedient disciples. Let us see if such was 
the case. ‘“‘Jesus answered them, I have told you already, and 
ye believed not: the works that I do in my Father’s name, they 
bear witness of me.’ But still, as ye call for a plain answer 
concerning my Messiahship and Divinity, I will give it: “I and 
my Father are one.’’ Can anything plainer than that be 
spoken? But did they believe? No: “Then they took up 
stones to stone him.” This reveals the animus and spirit of 
their scepticism. This proves the truth of what Jesus had 
said: unto them: “Ye believe not because ye are not of my 
sheep. My sheep hear my voice and follow me.” The real 
cause of scepticism in most instances is not that the intellectual 
conditions of faith are wanting, but the heart conditions in 
the unbeliever are wanting. ‘The carnal mind is enmity 
against God.” 

In a certain literary circle, where scepticism was quite pop- 
ular, some slighting allusions were made, on a certain impor- 
tant occasion, to the Christian religion. So uncalled for were 
these allusions and so captious the spirit that prompted them, 
that one who was present—himself a literary man and no pro- 
fessed defender of the faith—could not resist the temptation 
to administer the following just rebuke: “It will be found 
that any form of Christianity, whatever its defects and im- 
perfections, which has an open Bible and proclaims a crucified 
and risen Christ is infinitely preferable to any form of polite 
and polished scepticism which gathers as its votaries the de- 
generate sons of heroic ancestors, who, having been trained 
in a society and educated in schools, the foundations of which 
were laid by men of faith and piety, now turn and kick down 
the ladder by which they have climbed up, and persuade men 
to live without God, and leave them to die without hope. The 
worst kind of religion is no religion at all; and these men, 
living in ease and luxury, indulging themselves in the amuse- 


482 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


ment of going without religion, may be thankful that they 
live in lands where the Gospel they neglect has tamed the beast- 
liness and ferocity of the men who, but for Christianity, might 
long ago have eaten their carcasses like the South Sea Islanders, 
or cut off their heads and tanned their hides like the monsters 
of the French Revolution. When the microscopic search of 
scepticism, which had hunted the heavens and sounded the seas 
to disprove the existence of a Creator, has turned its attention 
to human society, and has found a place on this planet ten 
miles square where a decent man can live in decency, comfort, 
and security, supporting and educating his children unspoiled 
and unpolluted; a place where age is reverenced, infancy re- 
spected, womanhood honoured, and human life held in due 
regard—when sceptics can find such a place ten miles square 
on this globe, where the Gospel of Christ has not gone and 
cleared the way and laid the foundations and made decency 
and security possible, it will then be in order for the sceptical 
literatt to move thither and there ventilate their views. But 
so long as these very men are dependent upon the religion 
which they discard for every privilege they enjoy, they may 
well hesitate a little before they seek to rob the Christian of 
his hope and humanity of its faith in the Saviour who alone 
has given to man that hope of life eternal which makes life 
tolerable and society possible, and robs death of its terrors 
and the grave of its gloom.” * 


3. When No Doubt Means No Faith 


Sometimes never to doubt means never to believe. Some 
never doubt anything much and never believe anything much. 
They look to others to tell them what to believe. Intelligent. 
doubt often leads to the careful examination of evidence, 
which, when found conclusive, leads to the strongest faith. To 
believe without evidence is credulity, not faith. Faith is be- 
lief upon evidence. To avow belief too readily is the surest 
proof that there is no real faith. The Scotch told King Charles 
that if he would accept and subscribe to their creed, they would 


1 These words are attributed to James Russell Lowell; but their force 
and significance depend not upon the person uttering them, but upon their 
truth in describing the unreasonableness and insincerity of such forms of 
religious doubt as those here described. 


THROUGH DOUBT TO FAITH 483 


support his royal cause against his political enemies. They 
brought the documents to him to read and sign, if he found 
that he could do so conscientiously and sincerely. ‘Oh, it is 
not necessary to read it,” said he; “give me the pen; I believe 
it.” But the Scotch were quick to see that such ready belief 
and acceptance as that, without any examination whatever, 
was no belief at all; and so they put no faith in his fidelity. 
There is more faith in honest doubt, as Tennyson has told 
us, than in a faith that blindly accepts what it is bidden to 
believe. There were once in the same class in a theological 
school two students, one of whom dared to express a doubt 
of the correctness of a certain doctrine of the Church to which 
they both belonged, while the other declared that he believed 
every doctrine of the Church to which they belonged—said he 
asked only to be told what his Church taught, that he had 
promised to believe the doctrines and obey the rules of the 
Church and he simply wanted to be told clearly and fully what 
he was to believe. He was very critical of his classmate 
referred to because he dared to doubt a doctrine which his 
Church taught. And what was the sequel as to these two types 
of believers? The man that dared to doubt became one of 
the best of believers in Christianity and in the doctrinal system 
of his Church; and became an influential Christian leader in 
his state, highly respected by those without as well as those 
within the Church. At the end of some twelve or fifteen 
years, the man who was ready to believe without question 
anything and everything that his Church taught, had gotten 
out of the ministry and later was reported to have “kicked 
out of the Church, quite disgusted with it.”” Of course a man 
does not have to be a doubter of the doctrines of his Church 
in order to prove the honesty and sincerity of his faith. But 
while “standardised believers in standardised creeds” may seem, 
in the eyes of some, to constitute the ideal Church, more intelli- 
gent and loyal in their faith, more effective in their service 
and more helpful in their ministry, are those who dare to call 
in question doctrine which they honestly doubt. To accept 
tentatively things which others hand over to us may represent 
the first form and stage of belief; but he who stops there, 


484 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


never thinking things through for himself, never attains to 
that intelligent type of faith that alone makes one capable of 
enterprising and accomplishing great things. 


IT 
SOME TYPES OF HONEST DOUBT 
1. Doubt Due to Temperament 


Some people are by nature credulous; they believe readily, 
and require little or no evidence. Others are by nature scepti- 
cal; they are slow to accept statements that demand faith, and 
they require much and strong evidence before they will believe. 
To the former class Peter belonged; his impulsive nature was 
quick to believe and quick to act. Thomas belonged to the 
latter class. He was slow to believe, and he demanded strong 
and full evidence before he would believe. But our Lord, 
though he somewhat chided, yet had respect unto his scepti- 
cism. It was honest. The faith of the latter class when once 
secured is stronger and more deeply felt, and possessed of 
more value, than that of the former. None of the holy apostles 
was more faithful and firm in his loyalty to Christ than 
Thomas. He was utterly incapable of doing what Judas or 
Peter did. While no other apostle doubted as Thomas did, 
yet none, when convinced, believed as he did. His confession 
of faith and his testimony to the divinity of Christ after the 
resurrection were clearer and stronger than came from any 
other apostle: ‘““My Lord and my God!” I have always been 
glad that the sceptic Thomas was among the apostles. His 
belief is the best evidence of all. I know that if he, with his 
cautious and sceptical temperament, was convinced, there was 
certainly no mistake about the resurrection. Peter might have 
been deceived; Thomas never. Saint Augustine had this in 
mind when he said that “Thomas doubted that we might not 
doubt.” Neither Christ nor Christianity lost anything by the 
scepticism of Thomas, but gained much every way, and his 
scepticism is indeed now numbered among the credentials of 
Christianity. “He doubted that we might not doubt,” and 
he also believed that we might believe. 


THROUGH DOUBT TO FAITH 485 


2. Doubt Due to Trying Conditions and Experiences 


Nor is this the only instance found in the New Testament 
where doubt ministered to faith. Take the case of John the 
Baptist in prison, sending his disciples to Jesus to know if 
He was the Christ. John could not understand how it was 
that, if Christ were really divine, he would suffer him to be 
cast into a dungeon and detained there for no other crime than 
‘the simple and honest discharge of his duty as a preacher 
ot righteousness. Can it be that the omniscient and omnipotent 
Son of God will sit quietly by and see a wicked and heartless 
tyrant imprison and put to death his own forerunner and 
prophet who in the faithful and fearless discharge of his duty 
has denounced the wickedness of royalty? How can Christ be 
divine and suffer this outrageous wrong? ‘That was the ques- 
tion that confronted John as he sat in his loneliness amid 
the dingy walls and foul atmosphere of the gloomy dungeon 
of Macherus, awaiting his execution. He did not deny that 
Jesus was the Christ, but he was thrown into doubts, he began 
to question, he could not understand, he sought and needed 
reassurance—and this notwithstanding the fact that he had 
baptised Christ and seen the divine attestation that accom- 
panied that event. John’s state of mind was not unnatural in 
view of all the circumstances. But his doubt was sincere and 
honest, and it is both interesting and instructive to see how 
the Master met it. He bade the messengers take their seat 
and wait. He was busy. “And in that same hour Jesus cured 
many of their diseases and plagues and evil spirits; and on 
many that were blind he bestowed sight. And then he an- 
-swered and said unto them, Go your way and tell John what 
things ye have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, 
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead 
are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached unto 
them. And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in 
me and find a stumbling-block to his faith in what I fail to do.” 

That message was answer enough. It was all that John 
needed to reassure him that Jesus was the Christ; and even 
more, perhaps, was it what John’s disciples needed to prepare 


486 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


them for becoming believing and loyal disciples of Christ after 
their own loved leader should be no longer with them. And 
how much our own faith in Christ and in Christianity is en- 
riched by this episode in the life of our Lord, which would 
not have occurred if John had not doubted and dared to give 
expression to his doubt. If Thomas doubted that we might 
not doubt, just as truly may we say that John the Baptist 
doubted that we might not only believe but have greater faith 
in our faith as a result of his doubting. To this day the most 
effective of all arguments in proof of the divine character of 
Christ and Christianity—the argument from visible results— 
is that contained in the reply which Christ made to this dis- 
couraged and doubting but altogether faithful disciple impris- 
oned in the dungeon of Macherus, awaiting his early execu- 
tion. That reply served as a holy baptism and divine anointing 
for the ordeal that awaited him; and it serves to show us that 
the way to answer all questions, from whatsoever source they 
may come, as to whether or not Christianity is divine, is to 
point—is to be sure that we are able to point—to moral and 
spiritual results in the lives of men and nations accomplished 
by its divine transforming power. 

And so it sometimes occurs in the experiences of God’s chil- 
dren that they are surrounded by circumstances that seem to 
them for the time being to be irreconcilable with the overruling 
providence of an all-wise and an all-good God. They are 
thrown into a questioning state of mind. It is usually trials, 
misfortunes, sorrows, afflictions, death of loved ones under cir- 
cumstances peculiarly trying, that plunge the despondent be- 
liever into this species of scepticism. The destruction of prop- 
erty and life by fire and flood and earthquake, the sufferings 
of the innocent caused by disease and pestilence and poverty 
and war and inheritance—how can God be good, and allow 
such things? While this doubt may prove that one’s faith 
is not all that it ought to be, it does not necessarily prove that 
he who has it does not believe in and love the Lord Jesus 
Christ. I have known good people to get into such a state. 
It is a period rather than a state. It does not last long. The 
clouds roll away, and the doubting and despondent believer 


THROUGH DOUBT TO FAITH 487 


not only sees the sun again, but as he looks upon the receding 
clouds, he sees them lighted up with brightness and glory from 
above. Faith, if thrown out of its equipoise, soon reacts and 
reasserts itself. Such scepticism I know is inconsistent with 
the highest ideal of Christian faith; but it is nevertheless true 
that such experiences do sometimes occur in the lives of sincere 
and faithful followers of Jesus Christ, and they are often 
among the most useful members of the Church. Such per- 
piexed believers need guidance, not criticism or condemnation. 


3. Scepticism im Developing Youth not an Abnormal 
Experience 


Again, there is a scepticism that pertains peculiarly to youth, 
to youth as it is turning into manhood. Is there not a sceptical 
period through which every thoughtful young Christian, more 
or less, must pass before he settles down into the mature faith 
of manhood? Not every one, indeed, but certainly many do 
pass through just such a period. This scepticism marks the 
transition period between the immature faith of youth and 
the mature faith of manhood. A youth often forms crude and 
childish ideas of God, of heaven, of the soul, of the Bible, 
of all spiritual doctrines and things. These crude ideas must 
be abandoned and give place to more intelligent and correct 
ideas of spiritual things. The young Christian, in giving up 
his early formed ideas of spiritual things, is very apt to feel 
or to fear that he is giving up his faith in these things them- 
selves. Not so—certainly not necessarily so. This test of 
the faith, if met thoughtfully and passed successfully, makes 
one a stronger and more intelligent believer than was possible 
before. It oftentimes drives the thoughtful young man, while 
his faith is thus unsettled and he is at unrest, to earnest study 
and careful examination of the evidences of his faith, and as a 
result he is able to give thereafter an intelligent reason for 
the hope and the faith that is in him. If the scepticism of 
young manhood accomplishes this result, it is not an evil in 
one’s life. Under religious instruction in the nursery, at home 
and at Sunday School, a Christian youth grows up into a 
religious faith without much thinking for himself. The time 


488 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


comes when this intellectual and religious creed of youth must 
be recast. This questioning or sceptical period of young man- 
hood seems to be the occasion for doing this. His idea of 
God changes, but it is for the better and higher and truer. _ 
This is not only an important but a critical period in a 
young Christian’s life. For one may come out of this un- 
settled state not only into a stronger and more rational faith, 
but, unfortunately, if the other alternative be chosen, into a 
state of agnosticism or infidelity. The influences that are 
around a young man at this critical time—his companions, 
his spiritual advisers, the books he reads—have much to do 
with determining in which of these two ways he will come 


out of his scepticism. If he has positively Christian com-_ 


panions, if he is fortunate enough to find sympathetic spiritual 
advisers who can explain his state of mind to him and lead 
him out of it, and if good books fall into his hands and occupy 
his thoughts, nothing is to be feared as to the results. But if, 
on the other hand, his companions are irreligious scoffers and 
confirmed sceptics, if he has no wise and sympathetic counsellor 
from whom to seek advice, if books fall into his hands that 
minister to doubt and not to faith, then he is almost certain 
to come out a confirmed sceptic or a positive disbeliever in 
Christianity. Such a deplorable turn many young men do un- 
fortunately often take. One of the most earnest and Chris- 
tian young men of my acquaintance years ago, one who had 
the Christian ministry in view, became sceptical when about 
twenty-one years of age. Just at this critical time he began 
reading the writings of Matthew Arnold, John Stuart Mill, 
Professor Huxley, and the like—all of them books of a high 
intellectual order that might be read with profit at some time, 
but not books suited to his mental and religious needs at this 
particular time. It was not long before he decided not to 
preach, and later he abandoned all faith in the Christian re- 
ligion in so far as it claims to have a divine founder and super- 
natural accompaniments. 

“Nearly every young man in civilised lands,” says Professor 
Townsend of Boston University, “has his period of doubt. I 
passed through my period of personal scepticism while at col- 


THROUGH DOUBT TO FAITH 489 


lege. The experience was intense, lasting perhaps two years. 
A few sensible remarks from Dr. Lord, president of the col- 
lege, suggesting that Christianity is a system which, to a cer- 
tain extent, can be tested as other matters are tested, furnished 
a key that subsequently opened the door leading back to the 
faith of early boyhood.” 


4. The Agnosticism of Faith 


And there are some forms of agnosticism that are expres- 
sions more of Christian faith than of sinful disbelieving doubt 
—so writes Bishop McConnell :— 


“Some who think of themselves as agnostics are not really 
so. The Christian minister, in dealing with doubters, should 
proceed very carefully. It may be that the man who is outside 
the organisational fellowship because he doubts is a more 
intelligent, or more reverent, or more believing disciple than 
some who are within. Some within may not question because 
they may not be over-supplied with the instruments for ques- 
tioning. There is a sphere in Christian experience for legiti- 
mate suspension of judgment. The simple recognition of this 
will keep some from leaving the Church because of supposed 
agnosticism, and will certainly aid in correcting the misappre- 
hensions of those who resent this or that claim of the be- 
lievers to knowledge to which no one may be able to show title. 
There is a place in the Christian community for a spirit of 
agnosticism which is at bottom faith—the faith of willingness 
to leave some problems unsolved, with confidence that the re- 
sults can be left in the hands of the Father in heaven. If we 
get at the cause of agnosticism in some persons we may find 
it to be the reaction from too extensive claims to knowledge 
either on their own part or on the part of some believers with 
whom they have been associated. Take one theme very im- 
portant to us all—the belief in immortality. Many Christian 
believers in immortality do not say much about their belief, 
and that for the reason that they do not wish to seem to assume 
more knowledge than they possess. They feel convinced of 
their essential immortality as sons of the Father, but just how 
to construe the conditions of eternal life they make no claim 
to know. They say frankly that they do not know. There 


490 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


are no data upon which to frame even an opinion. All that 
we have is so clearly pictorial or else so utterly drawn from 
a world-view which has passed away, like that of Dante’s or 
Milton’s splendid imaginings, that we say that we have no 
knowledge whatever in the exact sense. Now this is a sincere 
and reverent and Christian agnosticism. It is the agnosticism 
of faith and not of doubt, for the believer is entirely willing 
to leave the outcome in divine hands. He does not profess 
knowledge which he does not have.” * 


5. When Scepticism Invades the Ministry 


And young ministers sometimes encounter periods of scepti- 
cism, especially if they never had such an experience before 
entering the ministry. The average young Christian grows 
up with the idea that the Christian religion is certainly true, 
and that there is no argument of any weight, or worthy of 
any consideration, against it. But when he begins the study 
of philosophy, metaphysics, science and theology, he finds that 
there are some real arguments on the other side. They are 
new to him, and while they shock him, yet they, in a certain 
sense, have a fascination for him. He shudders at the con- 
sequences of what opens before him as a possibility even, 
viz., that this and that fact or doctrine of Christianity may 
not be true after all; and if they are not true, does not the 
whole system of Christian Revelation likewise fall through 
with them? He is disturbed at his thoughts and is made 
very unhappy. Now it is the privilege of every Christian to 
have the witness in himself so clearly revealed and to enjoy 
so fully the assurance of the faith that he will be in no way 
disturbed at the discovery of some arguments against the ex- 
istence of a God and against the divine character of Chris- 
tianity of which he had no knowledge before. But not every 
young Christian, not every young minister, lives up to this 
high privilege as he ought, and there are times when even 
with the best of men the tides of faith run low and the 
psychological conditions are conducive to doubt. The faith 
of a believer is greatly in need of spiritual reinforcement at 


1“Personal Christianity,” pp. 1209-131. 


THROUGH DOUBT TO FAITH 491 


such times. Happy are they who, when their faith is thus 
sorely tried, know like John the Baptist where to go for re- 
assurance and comfort. One needs at such a time to study 
afresh the works and influence of Christianity in the world 
to be reconvinced of its divine character. If such an experience 
leads the young minister to an examination of the foundations 
of his faith—and if this examination fills his mind as never 
before with the truth and force of all those great evidences 
in proof of the divine origin and character of Christianity that 
have been called forth by the opposing arguments of the un- 
believing world—if this be the outcome of his experience, as 
it often happily is, then he will be a better and stronger Chris- 
tian and a more efficient minister of the gospel for having 
passed through such an experience with distressing doubts. 

An eminent and useful missionary to India was much 
troubled in his young manhood with religious doubts. But in 
the midst of his doubts he yet, strangely enough, felt the call of 
duty to go as a missionary to India and work for the salvation 
of the heathen. He went. Years later he returned to America 
on a visit, his labours in the meantime having been crowned 
with abundant success. Some one who had known of his 
early spiritual troubles chanced to meet him one day and asked 
him how he had settled his religious doubts. “I went earnestly 
to work for Christ,” said he, “and I have been so busy trying 
to save the poor heathen among whom I have been labouring 
for the past several years, that I have not had time to think 
of my doubts. I never did answer my difficulties and questions. 
But they ceased to trouble me when I became busy in the Mas- 
ter’s work, and I would not waste the time now that it would 
take to have them explained.” There are doubts born of 
having nothing to do, and the only way to cure them is to go 
to work for Christ. Christians that are busy in the Lord’s 
work, in helping the poor, in seeking and saving the lost, are 
rarely, if ever, troubled with doubts. They need God in their 
work, and they find that those for whom and with whom they 
work also need him, and this deeply felt need of God makes 
it easy to believe that One so greatly needed must surely exist 
and be available for men’s needs. 


492 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


III 
THE REINFORCEMENT OF FAITH 


1. The Effects of Christianity mm the World 


It is to be desired that every Christian’s religious experience 
should be so deep and his relations to Christ so close that he 
will not need rational and theological arguments to sustain his 
faith when circumstances arise which might tend to produce 
a state of scepticism. But, if a Christian ever finds himself 
in a moment of misfortune and weakness calling in question 
the divine character of Christianity, he needs only to do what 
Christ bade the disciples of John to do—consider the works 
of Christ and Christianity through all the ages which have 
reproduced in a spiritual way and in varying degrees the works 
which Christ performed in the presence of John’s disciples. 
They are the vindication of its divine claims and the unan- 
swerable argument in proof of its divine origin and character. 
It will not be perhaps an exaggeration to say that the noblest 
deeds of human history since the Christian era began and all 
the richest blessings of our civilisation we owe to Christi- 
anity. Christianity asks no surer vindication of its divine 
claims than that it be studied and judged in the light of what 
it has done for the human race. 

Christ often appealed to his works as the proof of his divine 
character. And so there is no plainer or stronger or more 
satisfactory argument for our day in favour of the divine 
origin and nature of Christianity than to appeal to its influ- 
ence and work in the world, whether upon nations, or com- 
munities, or individuals. What has been the effect of Chris- 
tianity upon the nations that have come under its influence? 
Take Great Britain, for example, whose inhabitants were, 
before the entrance of Christianity, as thoroughly heathen 
people as are those of China and India to-day. What has 
wrought this change? When Queen Victoria was asked by 
the Japanese ambassador as to what was the secret of Eng- 
land’s greatness, she replied, pointing to an open Bible: “That 
is the secret of England’s greatness.” What is the effect of 


THROUGH DOUBT TO FAITH 493 


the Christian religion upon a community that comes under its 
influence? Take, for example, such a notoriously wicked and 
lawless entrenchment of vice as “Five Points” in the city of 
New York. For many long years it defied the law, and so 
strongly was crime entrenched there that even policemen feared 
to go there. It continued such until the Christian missionaries 
began their work among the law-breakers and criminals there. 
But through the influence of the Christian religion it was 
transformed into one of the most law-abiding and moral sec- 
tions of the great city. How account for the transformations 
in moral character accomplished in the thousands of indi- 
viduals in almost every community on any other hypothesis 
than the divine character of Christianity? Never mind about 
inconsistent professors of religion and the failure of so-called 
Christian nations to practise high standards of ethics in their 
dealings with other nations—Christianity is in no way respon- 
sible for their failures, but condemns them as strongly as do 
the critics of Christianity. Judge Christianity by those who 
_do what it bids them do, not by those who fail to do what it 
bids them do. For a man or a nation to be called “Christian” 
does not make them such. ‘The greatest and best men that 
have ever lived have been believers in and worshippers of God 
and for nearly two thousand years past they have been be- 
lievers in and followers of God incarnate in Christ, and have 
ascribed the good that was in them to the Founder of the: 
Christian religion. “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, 
neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.” 


2. The Cause and Cure of Doubt 


We thus see that the cure of doubt and agnosticism is not 
by the method of Christian mysticism and subjective experience 
alone; better still, at least as the cure for some forms of 
doubt, is the pragmatic proof of faith by its personal and 
practical results. The highest and most convincing proofs of 
Christianity lie peculiarly in the field of moral test. There is 
no path to the discovery of specifically Christian truth but by 
moral venture in the realm both of believing and doing. The 
results, when seen in the inner as well as the outer life of the 


494 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


whole man, constitute at once the most characteristically Chris- 
tian answer to agnosticism and the most convincing witness to 
the reality and value of Christian faith. In the volume of Cole 
Lectures already quoted from Bishop McConnell utters words 
concerning the cause and cure of doubt so true and wise that 
we do well to reproduce them here: 

“The best reply to the doubter is the presence not so much 
of beliefs as of believing persons. Agnosticism should be met 
by Christian daring. The venturesomeness of faith, especially 
when it leads to expanding and improving life, is the reply 
to the doubts of the times. The theoretical objections to the 
possibility of walking are solved by walking. The objections 
to belief are solved by believing. The believers who attain to 
life by their belief are the actual facts that make doubts diffi- 
cult. If Christianity ever loses this quality of magnificent 
daring it will cease to be the Christianity of Christ. The be- 
lief in God, the belief in men, the belief in the possibility of 
filling the whole world of men with the’spirit of Jesus—these 
are the bold ventures which show forth the daring of Christi- 
anity. Hope grows by its own exercise. The persons actually 
at work at the relief of world-wide heathenism or at the re- 
demption of cities and nations from civic evils do not seem 
easily discouraged. 

“Some storm-battered intellects, having made the rounds 
from common sense to materialism and then by reaction to 
idealism, find themselves at the end in agnosticism. Others 
arrive at agnosticism by a different route. Agnosticism is with 
some just intellectual weakness or weariness. The mind is tired 
out so that it cannot believe. In confronting such agnosticism 
the Christian leader will attempt to tone up the whole life. 
A distinguished scientist used to say that he always felt a 
tendency to agnosticism when the currents of his life began 
to run low, and that he would find his way out by reading the 
greater poets, or by listening to the hymns of the faith, or 
by reaching out for closer fellowship with dear friends. Some 
agnosticism is the outcome of spiritual starvation, though we 
use the terms without reflection upon the character of the 
agnostics themselves. They may not be to blame for the 
dwarfing experiences through which they have passed. But 
in helping such impoverished souls the soundness of life in the 


THROUGH DOUBT TO FAITH 495 


Church itself should be an aid. The whole life of the Church 
ought to be so quick and stirring as to arouse life in others. 
_ The positive note should be ever ringing. The students of 
Christian thought in recent years have done much for us in 
demonstrating that the experiences on which Christian opinion 
depends rise and fall with the rise and fall of the vitality of 
the inner man; hence the more reason why everything about 
a Church should suggest vigour. This can only mean in the 
last analysis, of course, the vigour of the persons who com- 
pose the Church.” 


3. The Heroism and Victory of Faith 


Heroism is something more than daring. Daring may, and 
often does, act without reason. The “dare-devil” is one who 
throws reason to the wind. Heroism is not only calmly cou- 
rageous but is reasonable in what it dares to believe and do. 
“Thomas Carlyle,” says an English author in a recently pub- 
lished volume, “‘was never tired of repeating that the ultimate 
question which every man has to face and answer for himself 
is this: Wilt thou be a hero or a coward? No philosopher 
can relieve us from the responsibility of having to make that 
choice.” 


“Religion has sometimes been represented as introducing a 
new faculty called ‘faith’ into the man’s life, as adding this 
faith to the reason he had before, or perhaps as driving reason 
out and putting faith in its place. This is a misconception. 
Faith is neither a substitute for reason nor an addition to it. 
Faith is nothing else than reason grown courageous—reason 
raised to its highest power, expanded to its widest vision. Its 
advent marks the point where the hero within the man is get- 
ting the better of the coward, where safety as the prime ob- 
ject of life is losing its charm and another Object, hazardous 
but beautiful, dimly seen but deeply loved, has begun to tempt 
the awakened soul. It is to the heroic spirit, waiting in all 
of us for the Divine summons which shall call it from death to 
life, that the figure of Christ, dominating the ages, makes its 
great appeal.” + 


1L. P. Jacks, “Religious Perplexities.” 


496 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


John Randolph of Roanoke is said to have filled his copy of 
the ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” on his first 
reading, with annotations on the margin, approving the deisti- 
cal notions of Gibbon. Most of these notes he obliterated in 
after life. The following is what he wrote on the margin of 
the celebrated fifteenth chapter, when, later in life, he reread 
the book : 

“When the pencilled notes to this and the succeeding chapter 
were written the writer was an unhappy young man deluded 
by the sophisms of infidelity. Gibbon seemed to rivet what 
Hume, and Hobbes, and Bolingbroke, and Voltaire, etc., had 
made fast, and Satan—the evil principle in our (fallen) nature 
—had cherished; but, praised be his holy name, God sent 
straight to his heart the sense of sin and the arrow of the 
angel of death, ‘unless ye repent,’ and with it came the desire 
of belief; but the hard heart of unbelief withstood a long time, 
and fear came upon him and waxed great, and brought first 
resignation to his will, and after much refractoriness (God 
be praised, but never sufficiently, that he bore with the froward- 
ness of the child of sin, whose wages is death), God in his good 
time sent the pardon and peace which passeth knowledge in the 
love which struck out fear.” | 

William E. Gladstone, the eminent English statesman, once 
said that of the fifty-five truly great men whom he had per- 
sonally known in life all but three were devout believers in 
God, and nearly all of them believers in the divine-human 
Christ as God incarnate. If the fruits of theistic and Christian 
faith as seen in human character be compared with the fruits 
of infidelity and atheism, one can but feel that even if it were 
a delusion to believe in the existence of God and in the incar- 
nation of Christ, it would be better to cherish a delusion so . 
beneficent and potent for-human good than to believe that there 
is no God and that Christ was in no sense superhuman. 

“According to your faith, so be it unto you” is a statement 
which means that faith is the measure of the man. A man 
without a faith is a man without character. A man with a 
bad faith is a bad man in life, character, and influence. A 


THROUGH DOUBT TO FAITH 497 


man with a timid, weak, wavering half-faith is a weakling 
among men, tossed about with every wind of doctrine. Faith 
in error leads to an erroneous life; faith in truth, to a true 
life; faith in virtue, to a holy life; faith in Christ and im- 
mortality, to a Christian life, to life eternal. It is this vital 
and causal relation which faith sustains to life and character 
that gives it its great importance in the Christian system. 

Every man who has a conscious and well defined faith 

makes, not for others but for himself, an individual and per- 
sonal creed; and the value of this personal creed to his charac- 
ter and life cannot be easily exaggerated. This invaluable 
creed must not be confused with the historic church creeds 
which, written centuries ago, are in our day subjected to much 
and severe criticism. To possess authority, some one has 
said, a man must have a clearly defined creed. He must know 
what he believes, and believe it with his whole soul. His 
Christian feeling may be broad in its sympathies and free from 
bigotry, but his doctrine must be a clear, deep stream flowing 
between its solid banks, else it will become a swamp or a 
morass. The expansive lake avails nothing to generate electric 
power; but how different when its water flows through the 
close and rock-ribbed banks of Niagara! 

“He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he 
is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.’ The fact 
here stated appears so self-evident that we wonder why the 
inspired writer should have thought it necessary to state it. 
Of course a man who comes to God is going to believe “that 
he is,” or he would never come; nor is it at all likely that any 
man would seek God unless he also believed beforehand that 
he would reward his search. Why was it thought necessary 
to state a truth so self-evident? It was to teach us that every 
one who comes to God should not merely “assume” and “take 
for granted” the existence of God, but he must have a pro- 
found conviction and deep realisation of its truth and its moral 
significance. The first step, therefore, in explaining the divine 
plan of salvation and in guiding aright seekers after God is 
to so quicken into life their thoughts concerning the divine 


498 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Being that they shall not merely assume and assent to, but 
intensely believe in, the reality of the Divine existence and the 
fidelity of the Divine character. 

Faith, rightly defined, is the foundation of character, and 
right-doing is the result of right-thinking and right-believing. 
The man who does not believe in the Bible, in God, in Jesus 
Christ, in the divine authority of the moral law, in rewards 
and punishments in a future life—it is utterly impossible that 
he should be in conduct and character what that man will be 
who believes in all these things. The great and saintly men of 
the earth have all been great believers, and their moral great- 
ness is directly traceable to their faith. It was the great faith 
of Abraham that made him the father of the faithful for 
all time and the founder of a race the most noted for its 
moral character and achievements of all the ancient nations. 
It was the faith of Joseph that made him choose purity and a 
dungeon rather than guilt and freedom, and that made his 
name an undying synonym of innocence and virtue. It was 
the faith of Moses that was the secret of his life work and 
character, that made him the deliverer of his race and the 
legislator of the nations. It was the faith of Daniel that placed 
his name foremost among idealised men of courage and fidel- 
ity. It was the faith of Paul that inspired his life work and 
made him the grandest missionary that ever carried the gospel 
to the nations of the earth. It was the faith of “the fishermen 
of Galilee’ that made them “turn the world upside down.” — 
It was the faith and zeal of John Wesley that made him to 
be not only one of the humblest of disciples but the most 
influential religious leader of modern times, and enabled him, 
amid criticisms and oppositions, to inaugurate a work that 
to-day seems destined to envelop the whole earth with its 
doctrines of free grace, free will and full salvation. The 
inspiration of every great man’s work is his faith. 

Martin Luther said that in his day, because of the insistence 
of the priests on the observance of the fast days of the Church, 
the people had come to believe that it was ‘a greater sin to eat 
butter on a fast day than to lie, or to swear, or even to com- 
mit adultery.” The young monk of Erfurt was one of those 


THROUGH DOUBT TO FAITH 499 


brave, believing souls that dared to doubt; and in so doing he 
became the forerunner of Protestantism and the first interpre- 
ter of its faith; and we can but think that other monasteries 
also have harboured monks like himself in all things, except 
that they did not, like him, dare to give outward expression 
to their doubts. I love to look at the statue of Martin Luther 
and think of the young monk that dared to nail those anti- 
papal theses on the Church door at Wittenburg and to go, 
when duty called, to the Diet at Worms though it should rain 
down devils as thick as the tiles upon the housetop! And I 
love to recall, as I look, the splendid tribute of Marianne 
Hearn, the English poetess, to this great German leader—to 
whose Christian ideals if the German people had but been 
true, the world-war would never have been fought :-— 


That which he knew he uttered; 
Conviction made him strong, 

And with undaunted courage 

He faced and fought the wrong: 

No power on earth could silence him 
Whom faith in truth made brave; 

And, though four hundred years have gone, 
Men strow with flowers his grave. 


It puts granite in the grain and iron in the blood even to 
go to the grave, or look at the cold marble statue, of a man 
like that. It seems to speak and say, “Don’t be afraid to doubt, 
and, if need be, to stand alone for what you believe to be true 
and right.” It was not, however, in doubting, but in be- 
lieving that Luther found for himself and others the pathway 
to peace and to power. Of this pathway doubt may be the 
beginning, but it is not the end. It is not doubt, but faith 
that alone can “laugh at impossibilities, and cry, it shall be 
done!” It is the man who believes, who knows what he be- 
lieves, who has conscientious convictions and the courage of 
his convictions, to whom we are to look for great achievements. 
Daring to doubt is good, but daring to believe is better. And 
faith means God, and a great faith means a great God. 

The “Heathen sojourning in Galilee, A.D. 32,” described in 


500 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 
the oft-quoted words of Richard Watson Gilder, may have 


had to stop with an “If,” but no one who rightly appraises the — 
arguments and evidences that prove Christ to be the Author 


of the Christian religion is thus left in doubt as to its truth. 


“Tf Jesus Christ is a man— 
And only a man—lI say 
That of all mankind I cleave to Him, 
And to Him will I cleave alway. 


If Jesus Christ is a God— 
And the only God—I swear 

I will follow Him through heaven and hell, 
The earth, the sea and the air.” 


Bishop W. A. Candler’s volume titled “Christus Auctor,” 


after presenting in strong array the great arguments in proof 
of the divine character of the Christian religion, concludes with 
words like these: 


“Let us then dismiss our doubts and fears. We have found 
the truth; let us now accept it unfalteringly. We have not 
made this search for the pleasure of a mere excursion. Sin- 
cere and serious minds cannot seek truth in that spirit. The 
quest for truth is not the cruise of a pleasure boat but the 
voyage of a merchantman seeking goodly pearls until one be 
found worth all the world beside. It is just such a treasure 
that we have found in Him ‘in whom are hid all the treasures 


of wisdom and knowledge.’ He who came unto the world to | 


bear witness to the truth has given us the Living Truth. His 
words are final. “Christ no after age shall e’er outgrow.’ In 


him we discover that the heart of the universe is not inflexible — 


Power but redeeming Love. Here we may rest secure and 
confident.” 


CHAPTER NINETEEN 


THROUGH EXPERIENCE TO GOD 


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CHAPTER NINETEEN 
THROUGH EXPERIENCE TO GOD 


The only knowledge of God that is saving and satisfying is 
that obtained in and through a personal experience. The 
intellectual experience of God finds expression in faith and 
creeds; a heart experience of God expresses itself in love and 
other emotions; a volitional experience of God expresses 
itself in obedience and deeds. To know God by experience 
involves all of these. Religious experience is, therefore, 
fundamental and comprehensive. He who, travelling any 
one of the many different paths that lead to God, finds him, 
believes him, loves him and obeys him has such an experi- 
mental knowledge of him as makes him in the deepest and 
truest sense a child of God. 


I 
fHENATURE AND NEED) OFSRELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


There are some facts and truths the knowledge of which 
is a matter simply and only of apprehension and comprehen- 
sion by the intellect. There are other facts and truths a 
knowledge of which is attainable both by experience and 
by intellectual study; and in most cases where this latter 
double method of attaining knowledge is possible, the knowl- 
edge attained by experience is more direct and satisfying 
than that attained simply by intellectual study. To read what 
others have said in books as to the theistic conception of God 
may lead to a clear and full knowledge about God, and one 
need not believe that there is a God in order to obtain this 
kind of knowledge. But another student may seek and find 
God in a rich, full personal experience; and if so whatever 
knowledge he may have obtained about God by learning what 


others have said about him will be not only clarified and en- 
503 


504 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


riched but greatly enlarged by the experience which he has 
with God. 


1. Experience Man’s Best Teacher 


Experience, if not the first, is certainly man’s best teacher. 
We are so constituted by our Creator and so related to the 
physical world and our fellow beings round about us, and 
they to us, that, in the never-ending school of experience, all 
things are our teachers; and the greatest of all lessons that 
we learn in this school of experience are those pertaining to 
God and our relations to him. This general relation between 
man and his environment, established by the Creator that in 
and through experience free moral beings may realise their 
highest and best development is one of wise beneficence; and 
only by recognising it and adapting themselves to it can men 
be happy. 

In dealing with this problem, says Dr. Borden P. Bowne, 
we must first form a true conception of what the world is for, 
and its relation to man. “If the chief good in life is found 
in the pleasurable affections of the passive sensibility, and if 
the aim is to produce them and gratify them, then the world 
is a miserable and hopeless failure. But if the chief and last- 
ing goods of life are those of the active nature, conscious self- 
development, growing self-possession, progress, conquest, the 
successful putting forth of energy, and the resulting sense of 
larger life, the matter takes on a different look. Still more is 
this the case if the aim of the human world is a moral develop- 
ment for which men themselves are to be largely responsible, 
working out their own salvation. In such a view the good of 
the world consists in furnishing the conditions of a true human 
development, and in the possibility of being made infinitely 
betteras | 

It will thus be seen that man’s attainment of knowledge 
of.God in and through experience is but part and parcel of 
a large law of life by virtue of which the Creator has made | 
us in such a sense creatures of experience that all our best — 
lessons are learned as pupils in this school; and it is daubtful © 

+ Lhetsin, @p.275- 


THROUGH EXPERIENCE TO GOD 505 


if we may ever be truly said to know anything, unless the 
knowledge attained has in some way passed through the alem- 
bic of experience. Certain it is that man’s best and most 
satisfying knowledge of God is that which comes through 
experience. 

We sometimes talk about religion and religious experience 
as consisting of so many ingredients and essentials in a man- 
ner that leads to confusion. Each ingredient is magnified 
and stressed in turn to such an extent that we discourage truly 
Christian souls by our excessive analysis of the contents of 
personal salvation, seeing that they are not conscious of pos- 
sessing all the ingredients named. We must not forget, there- 
fore, that, however many things enter into religious experi- 
ence, personal religion itself is not a complex or a compound 
thing, but a unit; it is spiritual life; and repentance, faith, 
righteousness, sonship, holiness, love, are but so many ways 
in which this divinely begotten life of God in the soul mani- 
fests itself in a world of fallen but redeemed sinners. This 
spiritual life, possessed by every true believer, while perfect in 
kind, yet admits of perpetual increase, and this not only while 
embodied in the flesh, but doubtless forever. And inspiration 
has no nobler and better term with which to describe the future 
state of believers than this: it is life—eternal life. But not to 
the future state alone does this “life eternal’’ pertain; it is the 
present possession of every believer. Our Lord declared re- 
peatedly, ‘He that believeth on me hath everlasting life’’—not 
will have it hereafter when he dies, but has it now. To him 
who already has eternal life, death is but an incident along 
the way. St. John in closing his Gospel told us that he wrote 
the things therein recorded that men might believe in Christ, 
and that by believing they might have “life.” But later, 
in writing his more personal message (the First Epistle), he 
said: “These things have I written unto you that believe . .. 
that ye may know that ye have eternal life.” This is Inspira- 
tion’s last word to the believer. The soul that has entered 
into fellowship with God through Jesus Christ is already in 
possession of the life eternal, and although his “conversation” 
may be on earth his real ‘‘citizenship” is in heaven. 


506 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


2. The Bible and Christian Theology as Related to Experience 


The Bible is best understood when it is read as a book of 
religious experience—the experience of individuals and nations 
in their relations to and with God. And the same is true of 
Christian theology, which, however closely it may be related 
to the past, is, if it is what it ought to be, a product and 
expression and interpretation of the religious experience that 
prevails from age to age. It should therefore be not a static 
but a progressive thing. A progressive Christian experience 
cannot fail to clarify religious thought, enlarge faith and 
enrich theology in many ways. 

“The Bible,” says Dr. John A. Rice, “is not a text-book 
on theology, not even a treatise on religion. It is a record of 
experience, the experience of the life of God in the souls of 
men, of men scattered over a thousand years, in some cases 
distanced from each other by a thousand miles; and yet they 
are bound together by a common spirit, a common attitude 
towards the fundamentals of life, a common realistic touch 
with God. And God always takes the initiative, always moves 
upon man rather than man upon him, as in all other sacred 
books. He is searching for men rather than men for 
him. . . . Is it not necessary that each generation shall re- 
discover and reinterpret God? . . . An enlarging conception 
of God requires a changing conception of the Bible. When 
we understand the Bible to deal with religion and our concep- 
tion of religion to be subject to the changing time-spirit, we 
get upon a sure foundation. The changeless law of change 
does not involve the substance of religion, but its forms. 
Changing the methods by which faith thinks and works— 
change of faith itself indeed—is not loss of faith. The Bible 
becomes far more vital when thought of as the greatest of all 
books of religious experience.” * 

Nor are the following words of Dr. W. N. Clarke less 
forceful and true in describing the vital relation between ex- 
perience and the thought and theology of both Biblical and 
later periods of history: 


1“The Old Testament in the Life of To-day.” 


THROUGH EXPERIENCE TO GOD 507 


“The Bible itself is an expression of experience. If this 
experience had not continued, the Bible would have become 
only the record of an ancient and forgotten life, powerless to 
preserve Christianity in the world. The theology of any age is 
largely an expression of the Christian experience of that age. 
The general experience of any given time, with its character- 
istic peculiarities, grows up into a style of thinking, a moral 
and spiritual consciousness, from which there is no escaping. 
It influences the understanding of the Scriptures. It limits 
and modifies religious thought. Theology is formed in it as in 
an atmosphere. The theologies of to-day are part and product 
of the Christian life of to-day, the true offspring of the present 
Christian age. This is why they differ from previous the- 
ologies. If the theology of a time is various and changing, 
it is because the life of the time is various, growing, transi- 
tional. The vital Christian experience of any time is the best 
interpreter for that time of God and eternal life. It is the 
experimental nature of Christianity that makes Christian 
theology so fresh and living as it is. Progressive experience 
makes an ever-growing Church, and out of the ever-growing 
life of the Church comes an ever-growing theology, with the 
indwelling spirit of God as the guide of its progress. Theology 
can never stand still while the divine life of the Church is moy- 
ing forward.” * 


So too Bishop E. D. Mouzon finds that the Bible can be 
best understood when it is read and interpreted as a book of 
experience with God. He says: 


“Tn what we may more specifically call Christian experience, 
we are brought face to face with a personal God. Here lies 
the chief value of the Bible—it is a book of personal experi- 
ence. There is possibly no better description of the Bible 
than this: ‘It is the book of personal experience of God.’ And 
what makes it all the more valuable is that this experience is 
the experience of all sorts and conditions of men stretching on 
back through many centuries. This is what the Epistle to the 
Hebrews means when it says that “We are compassed about 
with so great a cloud of witnesses’—witnesses to the ever- 
lasting realities of religion—witnesses to the fact that man 


1See “Outline of Christian Theology,” pp. 18-20. 


508 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


does meet God. And they are witnesses as different in type 
as Abraham, and Moses, and David, and Samuel, and Amos, 
and Hosea, and Isaiah, and John, and Paul. This indeed is 
what makes the Bible to be a living book. It is far more than 
a record of dead facts; it lives and breathes with the same 
experiences which we ourselves have. If what is in the Bible 
did not answer to what we have experienced, it would be a dead 
book, as meaningless as the hieroglyphics down in Mexico, the 
key to which no man has yet discovered. The religion of the 
Bible is thus the religion of personal experience, a religion in 
which the Personal God has personal dealings with individual 
men. Our God is the God not only of great nations, but of 
Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, the God and Father of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of individuals.” * 


3. God’s Revelation of Himself in and Through Experience 


That man stands in need of a revelation of God higher than 
and even more satisfactory than that which physical nature or 
human reason can furnish is a statement which can be proved 
by an appeal to the religious history of the race, and men’s 
gropings after God. There are two ways in which God may 
furnish that revelation of himself of which man stands in 
need but cannot, by unaided reason, himself supply, namely by 
specific “divine acts of historic occurrence or by revelations 
continually repeated in men’s hearts,’ to use the words of 
Hermann Lotze. The revelations made to and through Moses 
and the prophets, in and through events of Divine signifi- 
cance in Hebrew history, and above all, in and through Jesus 
Christ, are examples of the former-revelations by means of 
“divine acts of historic occurrence.” But, however numerous 
and important these may be, not less important are the revela- 
tions continually repeated in men’s minds and hearts and con- 
sciences. These latter revelations are not only to, but in and 
through the minds and hearts and consciences of men; and 
men are both receivers and interpreters of these revelations. 
And the personal equation will have to be continually taken 
into consideration in that men’s capacities both as receivers 


1“Does God Care?” pp. 28-29. 


THROUGH EXPERIENCE TO GOD 509 


and as interpreters differ greatly among themselves. So that 
what men have in the last analysis to go upon, and to go by, 
is not a divinely given and infallibly interpreted revelation of 
God and his will; but the interpretations which they, as good 
and honest but fallible men, make of the revelations which they 
receive from God. We are always under the necessity there- 
fore of “trying the spirits” that we may be sure as to what is 
certainly from God. 

And yet in spite of the fact that this element of fallibility, 
this possibility of misinterpretation always attends these con- 
tinually repeated “revelations” made by God to and in and 
through the minds and hearts and consciences of men, they are 
just as vital to faith in God and just as necessary to a religious 
experience and to godly living as are the revelations in “divine 
acts of historic occurrence.” It is, we repeat, through experi- 
ence alone that men can really know God; and the revelation 
that creates a vital and enriching religious experience and 
makes God real is not so much the revelation which God made 
to some man in the past and which was recorded in the Bible 

as that other revelation that is being continually made in the 
heart which makes of the man who receives it a living epistle 
that may be known and read of all men. 

Hermann Lotze speaks of “upward-soaring trains of 
thought about God which reason can begin but is unable to 
bring to an end in a satisfying and convincing conclusion 
until they have been reinforced by those continually repeated 
revelations in the heart” of which mention was made above. 
These are wise and true words that find their verification only 
in a genuine religious experience: 


“We can hardly picture to ourselves the workings of God 
upon the heart otherwise than after this pattern: we cannot 
imagine the recognition of any fact as something that can be 
simply communicated, something that reaches the mind ready 
made and without any activity on its part, we can only imagine 
that occasion can be given to the mind to, as it were, produce 
such recognition by exercising this activity, and in this it is 
that every appropriation of a truth must consist.” 


510 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


All of which means that man’s knowledge of God—that 
knowledge of him that gives peace to the spirit and power to 
the soul—cannot be passed over in “blocks of revelation,” or 
in cut and dried creeds, from one man to another, even from 
a Moses or an Isaiah or a St. John, but must be gotten in the 
school of experience, through penitence and prayer, through 
faith and forgiveness, through service and suffering, through 
self-sacrifice and sanctification of the spirit. He who learns 
what God is like in this school of experience, who obtains and 
retains an experimental knowledge of God, has a moral 
dynamic in his life equal to all demands that may be made upon 
it either from within or from without. 


4. The Dark Pathway of Sin—Forces That Drive Rather 
Than Draw Men to God 


Along most pathways which men travel they are drawn to 
God; but there is one pathway along which men travel to God 
only as they are driven—that is, the pathway of sin. A guilty 
conscience drives one either away from God or in penitence to 
God. Conviction of sin is an experience that brings three 
things together; a man, a sense of guilt for sin committed, 
and God. These three cannot abide together. A man in the 
presence of God, conscious of his sin, can only find peace by 
departing from God or departing from sin. ‘Depart from me, 
for I am a sinful man, O Lord,” is the first instinctive prayer 
of a soul newly awakened to a sense of sin, as he stands in the 
conscious presence of the holy God. Said certain ones of old, 
pricked in their hearts by sin, ‘““Men and brethren what shall 
we do?” Saul of Tarsus, finding it too hard longer to kick 
against the pricks, trembling and astonished, cried out, “Lord, 
what wilt thou have me to do?’ And he, having found the 
way for himself out of sin to God, was prepared to tell others 
what to do; and so we find the Philippian jailer coming to him 
and falling down trembling and giving vent to his distress of 
soul by eagerly asking, “Sir, what must I do to be saved?” 
The same incompatibility between the conscience of sin and 
the conscious presence of the Holy God had been discovered 


THROUGH EXPERIENCE TO GOD 511 


long before Paul’s day by Isaiah: “Then said I, woe is me! 
for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips . . . for 
mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Then flew 
one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, 
which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar; and he 
laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy 
lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is purged.” 

As we thus study sin in the laboratory of religious experi- 
ence we find that the guilty sinner cannot endure the presence 
of the holy God; either the sin must be removed and purged, 
or the guilty sinner must withdraw from that God who is “a 
consuming fire.” “O wretched man that I am! who shall de- 
liver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. vii. 24) is the 
exclamation of a man under conviction, groaning to be de- 
livered. But the answer is not far off: “I thank God through 
Jesus Christ our Lord.” If under the overpowering sense of 
guilt the convicted sinner is made to feel that “the whole head is 
sick, and the whole heart faint,” that “from the sole of the 
foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but 
wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores,’ the Spirit that 
thus convicts makes haste to add: “Wash ye, make you clean; 
put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease 
to do evil; learn to do well; . . . Come now, and let us reason 
together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they 
shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, 
they shall be as wool.” 

The natural inquiry of every truly awakened soul, conscious 
of the sin that separates him from God, is “What must I do to 
be saved?” If the answer to any question has been made plain 
in the New Testament, it is the answer to this question: “Re- 
pent of thy sins, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
thou shalt be saved.’”’ Out of sin through penitence and par- 
don, through faith and sonship, into that fellowship with 
Christ that makes one a child of God—this is the old, time- 
honoured, evangelical pathway through experience to God. 
Will it ever be superseded? Can it ever be? Not so long as 
men continue to sin and to know in their inmost souls that no 


512 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


being less than God can deliver them from the power and 
guilt of sin.* 


5. Religious Experience as Related to Prayer 


It is impossible for two Christian doctrines to be more 
vitally related to each other than the doctrine of divine 
Providence and the doctrine of prayer. Each implies and in 
a sense necessitates the other. If back of and over this world, 
and of our life in it, there is a Divine Being, and if he be such 
a One as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and 
such a One as “Our Father who art in heaven,” abounding in 
love and exercising an ever watchful care over his children, 
as Christ revealed him, it is utterly unthinkable that those who 
sustain to him the relation of dependent and loved children 
should not think of him, love him and communicate with him 
in some such manner as is involved in the Christian doctrine 
of prayer. On the other hand if there be no God, or, if there 
be a God, and he be not a prayer-hearing and prayer-answering 
God, it is utterly irrational for rational beings to pray. 

Religious experience centres in prayer, the essence of which 
consists in the conscious communion of a finite spirit with 
the infinite Spirit. There can be no real religious experience 
without prayer. Men pray instinctively. Even atheists who 
profess to believe that there is no God have been known time 
and again to cry out to God for help in the midst of trouble 
and danger. And if a man believes that God is a person, 
possessed of all personal attributes like ourselves, and that he 
is the Creator and Governor of men, we cannot conceive of his 
being content to remain shut off from communication with 
him in some way—and no other way is so rational as that of 
prayer. But whether one is to find access to God in prayer 
or not, and receive answers to his prayers or not, depends 
largely upon a right interpretation of God and of the true 
nature of prayer and the answer which it is proper to expect 
from it. A man who so misinterprets the privilege of mak- 


1 See chapter on “Conviction of Sin” in the author’s volume titled “Per- 
sonal Salvation: Studies in Christian Doctrine Pertaining to the Spiritual 
Life.” 


THROUGH EXPERIENCE TO GOD 513 


ing his wants known to a prayer-hearing and prayer-answering 
God as to fill his prayer time with petitions for material, 
temporal and earthly things only, whose hunger and thirst 
are not after righteousness and who is seeking first of all 
and above all material blessings rather than the kingdom of 
God and his righteousness—such a man will likely find no 
pathway to God in prayer and be utterly discouraged in failing 
to receive answers to his prayers. That prayer which alone 
has the promise of being heard and answered, on no condition 
save the one condition of faith, is prayer for spiritual things. 

It is our privilege to take everything to God in prayer; and 
if we pray in faith, God will always hear us and answer ac- 
cording as he sees is best for us. But it is what we pray for, 
rather than how much we pray, that is the real test of spiritual 
power in one who prays, and that determines most largely 
whether or not it will be a prevailing prayer. It is possible 
for one to go often to God in prayer, to pray long and for 
many things, and yet be a very low type of Christian, provided 
the burden of his desires and prayers is for things temporal, 
such as health and wealth and friends and success in matters 
pertaining purely to this life. These things all have their 
place in prayer; but they are secondary and subordinate; and 
a prayer that is monopolised by such things to the exclusion of 
the moral and spiritual will likely be a prayer that asks and 
receives not, because, in what it omits, if not in what it con- 
tains, it asks amiss. The prayer that is a pathway to God 
and need never fail of a speedy answer is that of the soul 
that hungers and thirsts after righteousness, and the burden 
of which is, whatever else may or may not be included in it, 
for spiritual blessings, for “the kingdom of God and his 
righteousness.” 

Lecky, the eminent historian, in his history of European 
morals says of the early Christians: “There has probably never 
existed upon earth a community whose members were bound 
to one another by a deeper or purer affection than the Christians 
in the days of the persecutions.” It was because they were 
bound to a common Lord that they were so strongly and 
affectionately bound to one another. As early as the second 


514 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


century Justin Martyr could write and say: “For no one has 
shown such faith in Socrates as to die for his doctrine, but for 
Christ’s sake, not only philosophers but also mechanics and 
unlearned men have suffered death. There is not a single race 
of men, whether barbarians or Greeks, or whatever they may 
be called, nomads, or vagrants, or herdsmen living in tents, 
among. whom prayers and giving of thanks are not offered 
through the name of the crucified Christ.” 


II 
GOD IN THE EXPERIENCE OF MEN 


There are five relationships that God may sustain toward 
man. In one or more of the five categories of this ascending 
scale every man must have experience with God: God the Un- 
known, God the Enemy, God the Taskmaster, God the Friend, 
God the Father. 

Not every one who comes to know God passes or needs to 
pass through all these stages and changes of mind and heart 
with reference to God. Many men do not have to begin their 
conscious religious experience in its relation to God so far 
back as the first of these stages or even in the second of the 
five. But if any man should pass through all of them as a 
conscious experience, he would illustrate perfectly what is 
meant by coming through experience to God. Let us consider, 
therefore, the significance of each of these conceptions of God 
or relationships to him. 


1. The Unknown God 


First, there is the unknown God. God may be a stranger to 
one’s thoughts and not enter at all into one’s life. A man’s 
mind may be occupied entirely with thoughts concerning 
things finite and temporal, the material and the human; 
and although these things continually suggest to every think- 
ing man the infinite and eternal, the spiritual and super- 
human, one may stop and be content with the lesser and the 
lower. And even if one has thus occasional thoughts con- 


cerning God—as, indeed, every one must have—his thoughts 


THROUGH EXPERIENCE TO GOD 515 


may be so vague and hazy, so superficial and speculative, and 
God be so distant and undiscerned, that his life, in the mind 
and spirit, as in the body, is as though there were no God. 
To say that God is incomprehensible does not mean that he is 
unknowable. The finite cannot comprehend the infinite. If 
the infinite could be comprehended by the finite, it would prove 
that it was not infinite. But the finite mind of man can appre- 
hend that which it cannot comprehend. Finite man can and 
does apprehend the incomprehensible God, and in so doing he 
attains unto a knowledge of him that is, or at least may be, 
accurate and true as far as it goes. Though we must leave 
some things pertaining to the infinite forever unknown, these 
metaphysical limitations apply only to the intellectual knowledge 
of God. They do not apply in like degree to the knowledge 
of God that is attained by experience, and this is particularly 
the kind of knowledge the lack of which makes the divine 
Being the unknown God in the sense in which we are using the 
term “knowledge.” Man’s first and most important duty in 
life—as, indeed, it is also his highest privilege—is to become 
acquainted with God. 


2. God Conceived of as an Enemy 


Secondly, there is God the Enemy. One reason why many 
men are so slow to become acquainted with God is because 
they have an instinctive feeling and fear that if they get 
acquainted with him they will find in him one who condemns 
the life which they are leading. This fear is indeed well 
grounded if one is leading a life of self-indulgence and sin 
that he does not want to give up. Even to one whose thoughts 
of Deity are vague and superficial God is apprehended as the 
Holy One who will not look upon sin with any degree of 
allowance and is therefore regarded as one who if known 
would sustain the relationship of an enemy in that he must 
punish sin. God is indeed a punisher of sin, but this does 
not mean that he is the enemy of the sinner. He hates sin 
but loves the sinner, and the last of all relationships that he 
would sustain to any man is that of punisher. If one is 
living in enmity to God, it is because he is God’s enemy rather 


516 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


than because God is his enemy. He only is the enemy of an- 
other who cherishes wrong feelings toward him and sins 
against him. Not only is God not an enemy to men, but 
there is a Mediator between God and man whose one great 
office it is to induce men to give up their enmity toward God 
and the sin that causes it. Christ’s coming into our world is 
not an expression of the hate and wrath of God toward men 
as his enemies but of his love and mercy; not to reconcile an 
angry God to men by what he should do and suffer did he 
come but rather, as Paul interpreted the incarnation, God be- 
came incarnate that he might in and through Christ reconcile 
a sinful world to himself. 


3. God Obeyed as a Taskmaster 


Thirdly, then comes God the Taskmaster. It is better to 
know God as an enemy than not to know him at all. If one is 
living in enmity to God and in sin that portends punishment, 
it is best for him to know it, for knowing it does not make it 
so; but, on the contrary, knowing what awaits him may and 
should cause the sinner to give up his sin and enmity and make 
peace with God. If, driven by conscience and the foreboding 
of what awaits him, a sinner gives up his enmity and relates 
himself to God and begins to obey his commandments and does 
this, moved by fear rather than by love, God becomes to him 
the great Taskmaster. He looks upon God as the Lawmaker 
and as the Judge who interprets and the dead Sovereign Ruler 
who executes laws that must be obeyed. He who obeys God 
from a stern sense of duty only and sees in him nothing more 
than an Overlord makes of himself a bond servant when God 
invites him to be a son. Duty is always noble, but duty toward 
God without love is as cold as an iceberg when it ought to be 
warm with the heartbeat of animate life and love. And yet it 
is far better to serve God as a taskmaster than to see in him 
only an enemy to fear and, it may be, to hate. Life is indeed 
full of duties and tasks that have been assigned to us by our 
Divine Master, and unless he is to us Lord of all he really is not 
Lord at all. But if our life of service is lighted up as it should 
be with love, we cease to think of God as taskmaster, and the 


THROUGH EXPERIENCE TO GOD 517 


joy with which we accomplish the work which he assigns us 
transforms our task into a lifelong labour of love. 


4. God Found as a Friend 


Fourthly, God is conceived of as Friend. It is a great ad- 
vance in one’s experience of God when he ceases to regard him 
as a taskmaster and comes to look upon him as his divine 
Friend. And such he is most truly to every one who will allow 
him to be so related to him. The word “friend” gathers around 
itself a very different group of adjectives from those which 
define the taskmaster. It marked a great advance in his 
experience of God when a certain man of old who lived in Ur 
of the Chaldees came to interpret the Divine Being not only in 
terms of monotheism and personality but of friendship. It was 
because Abraham interpreted God as a Friend that he in turn 
became known as “the friend of God.” Indeed, important and 
significant as is the Hebrew monotheistic conception of God, 
it is doubtful if Abraham had failed to see in God the great 
Friend and all the moral attributes implied in that term, 
whether or not Hebrew monotheism and the Hebrew race ever 
could have attained that dominant place of influence in the re- 
ligious history of the ancient world which is justly accorded 
to them. And even now there are few higher and better things 
in personal religion than for a man to see in God his best and 
greatest Friend and cultivate within himself those spiritual 
qualities and moral virtues that fit him for companionship 
with his divine Friend. Christ uttered few words to his dis- 
ciples which were more precious to them and to us than when 
he said, “I have called you friends” ; and what better definition 
can there be of the Christian life than to say it is fellowship 
and companionship with Jesus? If God revealed himself to 
Abraham of old asa Friend, far more clearly and convincingly 
has he in these last days revealed to us in the person of Jesus 
Christ that he sustains this precious and intimate relationship 
of Friend to every human being who will permit him to do so. 
Indeed, it is in and through Jesus Christ alone that we can 
understand fully what it means to know God as a Friend. 


518 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


5. God Loved as a Father 


Fifth, God’s best and truest name and relationship to man 
is that of Father. As compared with the conception of God 
as a taskmaster, to think of him as a divine Friend is a great 
advance toward truth and reality in the interpretation of the 
nature and relationship of God. And yet precious as is friend- 
ship, it is but the portico and vestibule of the home. In love’s 
“holy of holies” is the heart of the home, and here it is we 
find the Father. Friends, however good and true and faithful, 
come and go in a sense that is not true of the Father, who 
abides ever in the home. To us mother is the embodiment of 
all that is holiest and dearest in the home. We need constantly 
to remember therefore that all that is dear and precious to us 
in motherhood is included in the Heavenly Father’s character 
as he is revealed to us by Christ. In heaven, where they 
neither marry nor are given in marriage, there are no sex 
distinctions, and so there are none in Deity. But if we are 
to get into our conception of the Heavenly Father all the vir- 
tues that Christ attributes to him, we must bring together all 
that we know of both motherhood virtues and fatherhood vir- 
tues and incorporate them into one personality. Thus alone 
can we reach the length and breadth and height and depth of the 
Fatherhood of God. Friends are good, but friends do not 
make home. It takes father and mother and sons and daugh- 
ters and brothers and sisters to make a home. All these 
precious relationships and the virtues that cement and sanctify 
them are included in the revelation of God as our Heavenly 
Father. ‘This is the conception of God beyond which there 
can be nothing higher. And there is nothing higher or holier 
for mortal men than to possess the virtues and qualities that 
rightly relate them to the Heavenly Father. “To as many as 
receive him, to them gives he power to become the sons of 
God.” “Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed 
upon us that we should be called the sons of God!” This is 
the last and highest revelation of God to man and the highest 
and most precious relation of man to God that can be reached 
by experience or even be conceived of. Happy are we that this 


THROUGH EXPERIENCE TO GOD 519 


stopping place in the divine revelations concerning God leaves 
us in our Heavenly Father’s hands and home. 


6. Making God Lovable in Human Life 


The question being asked of a group of thoughtful young 
people how they thought of God, the first answer given in reply 
was: “I think of God as the one whose business it is to punish 
people who do wrong. He is the great Punisher of bad boys 
and men.” ‘The fact that a youth should give such an answer 
as this to the question propounded was a severe arraignment 
and bill of indictment either against himself and the life he 
was leading or (and the fact that he was yet quite young may 
make this the more probable explanation) against those who 
had so talked to him about God as to leave uppermost in his 
mind the impression that God is first of all and most of all the 
great Punisher. An incident like this may well set all to 
thinking who as parents or preachers or Sunday school teach- 
ers are related to young people in a religious way and are in 
varying degrees responsible for their guidance in thinking about 
God, and responsible not only for the young but also for many 
grown-up people about us who, though mature in body and 
to some extent in mind, are in the matter of a knowledge of 
God immature and ignorant. If the greatest service that 
Christ rendered to men was so to interpret God as to make 
him lovable, is there any service greater than this that Christ’s 
followers can render to their fellowmen? * 


Iil 
GCHRESTAIN iin EX PERIE NGO, MEN 


After the advent of Jesus Christ, and God’s revelation of 
himself in his divine-human Person, religious experience 
centres in him and becomes for us Christian experience. The 
moon and stars furnish light for the traveller before sun- 
rise, but after the sunrise, it is the sun’s light that the traveller 
rejoices in and is guided by. The stars have not ceased to be, 
or ceased to shine, when the sun rises. Not only are they, one 


1See “Christian Advocate” (Nashville), Sept. 28, 1923. 


520 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


and all, shining on just the same after sunrise as before, 
but in spite of the fact that the stars of heaven represent 
an even greater source of light than does the sun, their light 
is superseded, is absorbed, so to speak, in the light of the one 
great heavenly luminary that comes nearest to us, and so 
completely illuminates our world with its light that we lose 
sight for the time being of the more distant heavenly host. 
God in Christ comes so near to us, means so much to us, so 
completely illuminates our lives with his light and life and 
love, that though our experience of the infinite and eternal 
God is just as real and true as it ever was to any believer in 
God before Christ came in the flesh, it is yet a simple fact 
that we see God in the face of Jesus Christ, and the incarnate 
Christ so completely dominates our experience of God that we 
call it most properly Christian experience. 

In Dr. T. R. Glover’s volume titled “Jesus in the Experi- 
ence of Men,” are statements which confirm the foregoing 
observations as to the distinctly Christian character of all 
present day religious experience, at least among all those by 
whom Christ is known and worshipped as God incarnate: 


“Tf the affirmation of the writer to the Hebrews is to stand, 
“Jesus Christ, yesterday and to-day the same, and forever’; 
if the Church is to maintain that he has any permanence; we 
shall have to show what has been his real place in human ex- 
perience, and to prove that the teaching of the Church about 
its Master rests not on abstract theory or mythology, but has 
foundations in what men have actually experienced of him. 
We shall have to treat such evidence as the Christian genera- 
tions give us, exactly as we do all historical evidence—with the 
same sympathy, with the same caution, applying the same 
canons of judgment, using the same habits of doubt, looking 
in the same spirit of truthfulness for alternative explanations, 
careful always to limit our statements severely by our real 
knowledge. 

“Jesus had a hold of the centrality of God in experience in 
a way that still surprises us. Call it genius, insight, intuition 
—or use the speech of the Church and say Word, Essence, 
Homoousios—the fact we are all trying to express is the intense 


THROUGH EXPERIENCE TO GOD 521 


hold that Jesus has of the Real; he knows, where others are 
guessing, and guessing badly. . . . So far as I understand the 
times in which we live, religion is only possible to the modern 
man along the lines of Jesus Christ. For the really educated 
man of to-day there are no other religions... . It is Jesus 
or nobody, and we are still far from grasping the whole sig- 
nificance of what he has to say. God for Jesus, God in Jesus, 
is an unexplored treasure still; and for us, apart from Jesus, 
God is little better than an abstract noun. . . . In the mean- 
time it is the experience of countless souls that where we touch 
Jesus we do somehow touch the real. Do we not know men 
and women who have been remade by Jesus Christ? In our 
own lives, too, we know the help that Jesus has been and is. It 
is our experience that we can depend upon him, that we can 
utilise him; and our experience is guaranteed in a measure by 
the similar experience of others. . . . We shall never under- 
stand the last nineteen centuries, if he and his influence are un- 
familiar or unintelligible to us. We shall not have our full 
equipment for facing the future if so great a Force, intel- 
ligible, available and unexhausted, is left by us on one side. 
~The progress of the Christian life is marked and measured 
at every stage by increasing dependence on Jesus; Christian 
and non-Christian, we have to explain this fact in life. We 
have to understand Jesus Christ, unless our universe is to be 
chaos.”’ 


1. Christ Both the Creator and the Creature of Christian 
Experience 


To say that Christ is the Creator and the divine source of 
all Christian experience is to utter a self-evident truism. 
After Paul became a Christian he said “for me to live is 
Christ.” Those who are true Christians are said to be “in 
Christ.’”” The real Christ of a believer is not the Christ of his 
creed but the Christ of his experience. If this be true then it 
follows not only that Christ creates our Christian experience, 
but it is also true, in a sense, that experience creates our 
Christ. A true conception of Christ is not only vitally related 
to a true knowledge of him—meaning by “knowledge” some- 
thing that is larger and fuller than a mere “conception’’—and 
not only is a true knowledge of him vitally related to a true ex- 


522 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


perience with him; but the real and true Christ is what the 
real and true believer who has a real and genuine experience 
with Christ says that he is. Experience is a better interpreter 
of what Christ really is than any amount of literary and his- 
torical knowledge of him, apart from Christian experience, can 
possibly be. 

Where does the moral soul find the moral reality for which 
it craves? Dr. P. T. Forsythe asks this question and answers 
itethus): 


“Where can it find it but in God, and God’s supreme, eter- 
nal, moral action. A person can only rest in a person, a soul 
ina soul, Nature and soul are alike unreal till they are settled 
on that rock. And that rock is practically Christ; for experi- 
ence it is Christ. The moral God, the real God, the sure 
God, the Eternal God is with us only in Christ—the Christ 
of my experience and of man’s, The certainty of God, the 
reality of him, the love in him, the holy beauty in him, 
communion with him, are ours only in the person of Christ. 
It is not at last a case of either touching God or being touched 
by him, but of living and habitual communion with him, 
not of his presence, but his fellowship.”’ 


2. Christian Experience the Essence of Christiamty 


While Christ was here in the flesh, mingling with men and 
training his apostles, his chief concern was that they should 
be instructed in and have a true knowledge of the Heavenly 
Father and be rightly related to him. Next to this he sought to 
give them a true knowledge of the spiritual nature of his king- 
dom which could be attained only through a true interpreta- 
tion of his own divine-human person and by personal faith in 
him as the Redeemer and Saviour of the world. He mani- 
fested no concern whatever about having any written records 
made concerning himself and his works and discourses— 
which it would seem he would have done, or would have had 
done, or at least would have ordered to be done after he left, 
if the New Testament was to be so essential and vital to the 
faith and life of the Church as some have maintained that it 
is. And when he went away what was he most concerned 


THROUGH EXPERIENCE TO GOD 523 


about? It was that he should have witnesses—and this means 
men with an experience and with a message—and that they 
should go everywhere telling what they believed because of 
what they had seen and heard and felt. This is what made 
the Christian Church—not written records, useful as they have 
been, but Christian experience and preaching the good news of 
the gospel of experience—and on this same thing the life and 
power and the perpetuity and growth of the Church depend 
to-day. And so Dr. Thomas Carter is putting the emphasis at 
the right place when he says: 


“Christianity is not primarily a book religion. It is, first 
of all, a Life; and it is only because that Life was first lived 
that it afterwards came to be delineated—first in the minds 
and hearts*of his early followers; then in the oral traditions 
as these same disciples in loving memory told and retold the 
old, old story to their converts and their congregations; and, 
finally, when the voices of those that had heard him grew fewer 
and fewer by the inroads that death made, this tradition was at 
length intrusted to frail parchment. But the original writing 
was on the hearts and in the lives of men. And that original 
text is still with us. For, in the language of him who wrote 
certainly the dominating portion of the New Testament, the 
real Christian Scripture is the truly Christian character, as it 
reflects the principles incorporated in and inculcated by Jesus 
our Master. For, says Paul to the Corinthians: ‘Ye are our 
epistle, . . . known and read of all.’”’* 


3. Christ Alone Essential to Christian Experience 


While we claim historical trustworthiness for the New Tes- 
tament, we believe that many theologians have given a place 
and an importance to the New Testament which belongs only 
to Christ and Christian experience. “We have so long associ- 
ated the Christian revelation with the New Testament,” says 
a recent writer, “that we may almost think it was made when 
the New Testament was written. Not so; it was made in the 
person, mission, and work of Christ, and it was in the lives 


1“Story of the New Testament.” 


524 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


of his disciples that his revelation of God was first observed. 
There it lived in intense vigour, and for years it was preserved 
in life alone, without aid from writings. This experience 
would have preserved Christ’s revelation to man if there had 
been no Bible. The value of the Scriptures in keeping the 
experience true is beyond all estimation: and yet to think that 
Christianity would necessarily have perished from the world 
if there had been no Scriptures is to overlook its living power 
as well as the teaching of its early history. Certainly, Christi- 
anity would have suffered without the Scriptures: but who, 
knowing what was done in the first age, dares affirm that it 
would have become extinct?’ The ability of Christianity to 
produce and to preserve the experience of salvation in the 
hearts and lives of those who accept it is what makes it the 
power of God unto salvation. A living Christ and a living 
experience of salvation would make Christianity, whether we 
had any Bible or not. It is not the Bible that makes Christian- 
ity, but Christ and Christian experience.* 

The man whose faith in Christianity rests primarily not on 
his own personal experience, but on the dogma of an infallible 
Bible has a book religion, and his faith is endangered when- 
ever the absolute infallibility of this book in all its statements 
is seriously called in question. Such a man is much disturbed, 
and thinks the very life and power of Christianity are threat- 
ened, if Biblical critics seem to prove anything that does not 
accord with his dogma of Biblical infallibility. But the man 
whose faith in Christianity rests primarily upon the living, 
divine Christ and upon a living experience of his saving power, 
has a foundation to his faith which no criticism can shake, 
much less destroy. 


1“This finds a parallel in the case of the Old Testament religion and 
its Bible. Great things were done by God in Israel before the Hebrew 
Bible came into existence. Nay, one might say that the best days of 
Israel were over before the sacred Book appeared; that Jehovah was more 
manifestly present among the chosen people when they were the people of 
the living Word than when they became the people of the written Book. 
The people of the Book were a degenerate people; the emergence of the 
Book was coincident with the night of legalism; and the use made of 
it was to a large extent idolatrous, and such as tended to hide rather than 
reveal God. This, however, was no fault of the Book, but was rather 
the fault of its readers.” A. B. Bruce, “Apologetics,” pp. 298, 299. 


THROUGH EXPERIENCE TO GOD 525 


The life and power of Christianity are not staked upon 
the issues of modern Biblical criticism. If it could be proved 
that the four Gospels are not trustworthy and accurate in all 
their statements concerning the historical Christ, the loss of 
confidence in the infallibility of the record would indeed be 
serious, but it would not be vital and fatal. The power of 
the living Christ and the living experience that carries with it 
a knowledge of that Christ would not thereby be destroyed. 
We go further, and affirm that if any or all of the four Gospels 
could be shown by a true exegesis to attribute to Christ any 
thought or feeling or act that was morally wrong, we would 
say unhesitatingly that it is the record that is wrong and not 
Christ. Indeed we would be but following the example of 
Paul (Gal. 1:8) if we should say that even if an angel of 
heaven said aught against Christ we would not believe him. 
That is, so great is our confidence in the moral perfection and 
divinity of Christ, based upon our own experience of his 
saving power, and our knowledge of his divine work in the 
world, that we would be ready to pronounce even the Gospels 
themselves false if they should be found to attribute anything 
morally wrong to him. 

In pursuance of this thought Dr. Newman Smyth says: 
“The Scripture finds both reasons for, and limitations of, its 
authority in the knowledge and experience which man has of 
Christ, and the Spirit of Christ. A Scripture which could 
plainly and palpably deny the Christ in the best, most developed 
and purest understanding of him, would thereby be judged to 
be unworthy of a place in a canonical Bible. . . . In other 
words a Scripture must be Christian in order to be accepted as 
canonical.” And “the necessary inward judge of what is 
Christian,’ he further says, “is the common Christian con- 
sciousness, or the continuous experience and ever-renewed 
testimony of the Church.’’* In other words, it is not the 
Bible, important as it is and true as it is, but the living Christ 
and a living experience of his saving power that constitute the 
foundation and essence of Christianity. 


2 “@hristian Vethics spp. 74y7 5s 


526 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


4. The Christ of History and Experience 


By far the greatest value which the New Testament pos- 
sesses for the world grows out of the fact that it presents to, 
and preserves for, every generation the one and only trust- 
worthy record of the life and teachings of this divine-human 
Person. We have claimed for these records such historical 
trustworthiness as characterises the writings of capable and 
honest men, whose one and only purpose in writing them was 
to set forth what they believed to be the truth. If their state- 
ments are true and their writings possessed of only general 
historical trustworthiness, Christ is not a mere man, but a 
divine Person. Those who deny his divinity can do so only 
by denying not only the historical trustworthiness of the rec- 


ords, but the trustworthiness of experience. For the Christ of: 


present day experience and the Christ of history reinforce and 
confirm the trustworthiness of the New Testament records in 
their interpretation of him as divine, so much so that if Christ 
had not been already interpreted as a superhuman and divine 
Person, we would be forced by the facts to do so to-day in 
order adequately to explain his transforming influence upon 
individuals and his supremacy in the moral world. There are 
two methods, therefore, of testing whether the divine Christ 
of the New Testament records, or the fictitious and merely 
human Christ of Renan and Strauss is the real Christ—viz., 
the test of history and the test of experience. These two how- 
ever, are in a sense one, seeing that history is nothing more 
nor less than the well accredited and recorded experience of 
past generations. 

Let us consider first the Christ of history. Christ has now 
been at work for nineteen hundred years in the world. Do 
the work and influence of Christ in history, let us ask, accord 
best with that conception of him as a divine person which is 
found in the Gospels, or with that which makes him to be noth- 
ing more than an ordinary human being all of whose super- 
natural attributes and acts are accounted legendary and ficti- 
tious creations of the mythical imagination? We answer this 
question unhesitatingly by saying that it is the divine Christ 


ee a ae 


THROUGH EXPERIENCE TO GOD 527 


that has entered into and wrought in history. No mere 
human Christ, no Christ whose divinity is fictitious, could 
possibly have exercised the moral influence during the past 
nineteen centuries that Jesus Christ has exercised, and his 
moral influence to-day is greater than ever before. When 
the four Gospels, therefore, ascribe divine attributes and divine 
works to Christ, their representation of him is in perfect 
accord with his true place and influence in history. If, then, 
the Gospel narrative is fictitious, in so far as it ascribes divine 
works and attributes to Christ, and if it be true (as the 
legendary and mythical hypotheses claim) that the real Christ 
was a mere man, we have confronting us the curious fact, that 
the Christ of history corresponds wholly with the fictitious 
divine Christ and not at all with the real Christ who was a 
mere man. But this is only another way of saying that the 
diving Christ of history is perpetually proving the four Gos- 
pels to be true in their ascription to his Person of divine at- 
tributes and works. On the other hand, if the position of 
Renan and Strauss were true, we would have to admit that 
the one person who is most powerful in all history and most 
influential for good in the world to-day is an unreal and ficti- 
tious character, who owes his lofty place in the Gospels and in 
history, to the legendary and mythical tendencies of overzeal- 
ous Christian disciples of the second century. Let him be- 
lieve this who can! 

John von Muller, the great Swiss historian, after examining 
the writings of seventeen hundred and thirty-three authors, 
in seventeen thousand folio pages, gives the following as the 
result of his extensive investigations in the philosophy of 
history: “Christ is the key to the history of the world. Not 
only does all harmonise with the mission of Christ; all is sub- 
ordinated to it. When I saw this, it was to me as wonderful 
and surprising as the light which Paul saw on his way to 
Damascus; the fulfilment of all hopes, the completion of philos- 
ophy, the key to all the apparent contradictions in the physical 


1We find it desirable to repeat here the thought of this paragraph, 
even though it has already been stated, as was fitting, in the chapter titied 
“Through Christ to God.” 


528 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


and moral world; here is life and immortality. I marvel not 
at miracles; a far greater miracle has been reserved for our 
times, the spectacle of the connection of all human events in the 
establishment and preservation of the doctrine of Christ.” | 
But Christ is not only the Christ of history who has been 
at work for centuries past; he is a present living Christ who is 
at work in the hearts and lives of multiplied millions now 
living. And what we have just said proves that what we have 
here called the Christ of history is but Christ in the experi- 
ence of past generations. If it had not been that he has entered 
into and been a part of the lives of men, there would have been 
no Christian history with records for us to read to-day. But 
coming to our day, we ask: Is Christ’s influence in the realm of 
personal experience that of a mere man, and that man a cre- 
ation of the legendary and mythical imagination, or is it the 
work of a divine Christ? What says the inner consciousness 
of those who have experienced his saving power? The uni- 
versal consensus of opinion on the part of those who have an 
experience and a Christian consciousness to appeal to is that 
the Christ in whom and by whom they have been made new 
creatures is divine. It is impossible to convince them that 
the Christ whose saving power they have experienced and who 
is enthroned in their hearts is nothing more than a creation 
of the religious fancy of men during an age of legends and 
myths. And if we turn our eyes away from ourselves and look 
at the work Christ is now doing upon the hearts and lives of 
others, we cannot fail to see moral results in the transformation 
of individual character, and in whole communities and 
nations, which justify the conclusion that he who is working 
these results before our eyes is not a mere creation of the 
fancy and superstition of men, an imaginary Christ portrayed 
in legendary literature, but a divine and living Christ, whose 
character accords perfectly with that set forth in the New 
Testament. Thus both history and experience confirm the 
truth of the New Testament in so far as it represents Christ 
as being a Divine Person. 


THROUGH EXPERIENCE TO GOD 529 


IV 
THE RESULTS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


There has been no phase of religious and theological litera- 
ture which in the last quarter of a century has received more 
notable development than the psychology of religion, and it is 
in the realm of religious experience that this study has been 
most notably enriched. The volume by Professor William 
James of Harvard University titled “Varieties of Religious 
Experience’ was an epoch-making book in that it gave such 
a recognition of religious experience as one of the real and 
altogether normal facts of human beings as it had never had 
before at the hands of psychologists, philosophers and scien- 
tists. The Ritschlian Theology of Germany and the Prag- 
matism of the New England philosophers though approach- 
ing the subject from different angles were in entire accord in 
the emphasis which they have given to religious experience in 
their study alike of religion, of man and of God. The evi- 
dential value of religious experience has not only been recog- 
nised but emphasised in recent years by numerous writers as 
among the strongest credentials of the Christian religion, and 
not without a certain value among all religions as proving 
that the universal hunger for God is normal and has found 
legitimate though wholly inadequate expression in the various 
religions of mankind. 

It is inevitable that the final verdict of men as to the truth 
and value of religion, and respectively of the various religions, 
will be determined by experience. But it is of the utmost 
importance that this test be fairly applied. An individual 
who finds his religious experience unsatisfactory—who finds 
his experience with God and with Christ not only unconvinc- 
ing but wholly disappointing—should be sure ere he brings 
an indictment against God and religion, that the explanation 
and cause of the unsatisfactory results are not in himself and 
his own failure to meet the reasonable conditions involved. 
How superficial was the weighing of facts and evidence on 
the part of those who, in discussing the responsible causes of 


530 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


the late World War, said that it was brought about by the 
Christian religion—and this, it was averred, was true because 
the nations that waged the war were, on both sides, “Christian 
nations.” The Christian religion, therefore, has been tried by 
experience and found wanting !—so they argued. How much 
more truly did they speak who said that it was because the 
nations that were morally responsible for this war, even though 
they were called Christian, were acting wholly contrary to the 
teaching of Christianity in whatever they did to bring on 
the war. They only who truly follow the teaching of Chris- 
tianity are putting it to the test of experience, and by them 
only can Christianity be fairly judged. 


1. The God of Nature and the God of Grace Are One 
in Experience 


He who has come to know God by experience should find 
him everywhere. Especially is it good for one to learn that 
the God of nature and of grace are one and the same God. 
When a state of nature and a state of grace are distinguished 
from each other after the manner of the older theologians, 
the former is meant to describe a state of sin and the latter 
a state of personal salvation which has been attained through 
faith in Jesus Christ as a personal Saviour, accompanied by 
an experience of his pardoning power in the forgiveness of 
sin. That we can enter into such an experience only through 
Christ as the door of salvation is true, but this does not mean 
that we cannot also seek and find in communion with nature 
the God who pardons sin. If in communion with nature we 
find God, he is not a different but the same God whom Christ 
reveals to us. That the presence and power of God may be 
revealed to us in and through nature just as truly as in and 
through an experience of divine grace, may be shown by 
an incident narrated by Dr. R. W. Dale in his little volume 
titled “Christian Doctrine” : 


“T was living in a small town in one of the Southern 
counties of England,” said a friend of Dr. Dale to him once, 
“and one Sunday afternoon I went out into the country for a 


THROUGH EXPERIENCE TO GOD 531 


stroll. It was summer, and after walking for a few miles 
I lay down on the side of a hill. I saw, stretching to the distant 
horizon, meadows and orchards and cornfields; the cloudless 
skies were gloriously blue, and the sun was flooding earth 
and heaven with splendour. The wonderful beauty filled me 
with awe and delight. And then suddenly, through all that I 
saw, there came the very glory of God. I knew that he was 
there. His presence, his power, and his goodness took pos- 
session of me and held me.” “Before that great experience,” 
Dr. Dale observes, “my friend might have said, ‘I believe that 
God is’; but afterwards he could say, ‘I know that God is.’ ”’ 
God came to him in the loveliness of that summer afternoon, 
Dr. Dale explains, not as an inference of reason, but as an 
object of conscious knowledge, made certain by experience. 
This experience has been the experience of multitudes of men. 
Within and behind all visible and transitory things they have 
discovered, they have felt the power of an unseen and eternal 
Presence. They can give no account of how they became con- 
scious that the august Presence was there, but they knew it. 
We are so made, and the universe is so made—and there are 
such relations between ourselves on the one hand and heaven 
and earth on the other—that we see mountains and rivers and 
woods and cornfields and clouds and sky and ocean and sun 
and stars; we are sure that they are there. How we see all 
these wonders, we cannot tell; but we see them. And there are 
such relations between ourselves on the one hand and God on 
the other that in hours of vision we discover behind and within 
the greatness and glory of the material universe a diviner 
greatness and a diviner glory. How the discovery is made, 
we cannot tell; but its reality is absolutely certain. We are 
in the immediate presence of the Eternal. Our faith stands 
“not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.” 


2. Religious Experience a Solvent of Religious 
Perplexities and Bond of Unity 


Man’s desire to know the truth about God and his relation to 
him is, more than anything else, the driving force that makes 
for moral progress among men. There are no “cut and dried 
answers”’ that have been prepared by God or man which can 
be furnished to inquiring souls with the sure guarantee that 


532 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


they will answer all questions. Only he can hope to find a sat- 
isfactory answer for religious questions and perplexities who 
thinks things through for himself and is willing to be a learner 
in the school of experience. It is true, the Churches have . 
prepared ready-made answers in the form of creeds, but 
ready-made solutions as a rule satisfy none but “standardised 
minds”; and it is doubtful if “standardised minds’ make a 
type of believer as good and true and strong as those who, in 
order to find satisfaction, have to think things through for 
themselves. “Prepared breakfast foods’ will be helps or 
hindrances to health of body and mind only in proportion as 
they may be digested and assimilated; for it is not what or 
how much one eats, but what and how much he digests, that 
is the measure of his strength. 

But one does not wait until he understands all about foods 
and their digestible and strengthening qualities before he be- 
gins to eat and to grow. He takes foods by faith. And so 
it must be, within limits, in the realm of religion. It is fitting 
that one should enter upon the Christian life taking some 
things, some simple facts and truths, by faith. Faith pre- 
cedes and outruns reason, and in so doing it is acting ration- 
ally and not irrationally. “Personal religion may be warm 
and vital before any of the great problems of religion are fully 
answered. The Christian faith calls upon us to establish the 
probabilities of its fundamentals by putting them into practice 
long before we can demonstrate them to our intellectual satis- 
faction. The Christian religion offers us a working hy- 
pothesis for life which we are asked to try out. . . . It asks 
us to begin with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. We are under every obligation to test that hypothesis 
in laboratory and library; but we are asked, first of all, to test 
it in life, since it is first of all, a way of life. And if we can 
establish in this way a probability as to the reasonableness of 
faith, we can then proceed to test the fundamentals of that 
faith in every possible direction and with the least loss of 
warmth and vitality in our religious life.’ * It is for this 
reason that our Lord says that if any man will do his will— 


1A, T. Purdy, “Pathways to God”—a free quotation. 


THROUGH EXPERIENCE TO GOD 533 


indeed if he but wills to do his will—he shall know of the 
doctrine whether it be true or false. 

In thinking of the difficulties both theoretical and practical 
in the way of faith in God one is apt to overlook the fact that 
there are difficulties, both theoretical and practical, equally 
serious, if not more serious, in believing that there is no God 
and in living as if there were no God. That may have been a 
risky experiment to make and an unusual method of solving 
intellectual and religious difficulties and of obtaining an ex- 
perience of God, which was adopted by a “college man,’ an 
acquaintance of the author of “Pathways to God,” but, as it 
was tried and turned out well, it is worth recording here. This 
college man, finding himself confronted with many intellectual 
difficulties in the way of believing in God, decided to stop fool- 
ing. with his little doubts and face the supreme issue. He 
decided to live for six months as though there were no God. 
His was not a superficial, insincere or boastful denial with the 
lips, for he told no one of his determination; but he tried with 
the whole endeavour of a fine and honest mind to shut God 
out of all his life. The resuit was that he came out of that 
experience fully satisfied with his experiment in practical athe- 
ism, and fully established in his conviction of God’s existence, 
and with a faith which could not be shaken. Not all of his 
intellectual difficulties were solved by the experience, but they 
were put in their proper perspective and found to be not incom- 
patible with a satisfying faith in God. 

The only satisfactory and final mode of ascertaining whether 
or not a God exists, says Dr. L. P. Jacks,’ is by experiment, 
standing or falling by the issue, and resorting to the methods 
of argumentation only to confirm or elucidate the results so 
obtained. The experiment first, the argumentation second. 
He says :— | 


“T conceive of the experiment being made in something like 
the following manner: 

“Of the many Gods, or conceptions of God, that are offered 
me, the only one I am concerned to believe in, and should 


1 “Religious Perplexities,” pp. 55-60. 


534 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


find it a calamity not to believe in, is the God who is sympa- 
thetic, and actively sympathetic, on the lines of my deter- 
mination to achieve a better-than-what-is. Omnipotence and 
Omniscience I could dispense with if need be; the disappear- 
ance of the Cosmic Potentate would not leave me orphaned; 
the Absolute does not enthrall me and I should suffer no night- 
mare were I to learn that it did not exist. But were I forced 
to admit that the universe, as a whole, is quite indifferent to 
this desire of mine to achieve a better-than-what-is, that there 
is nothing in its nature which shares my interest in that matter, 
nothing there that backs me up, nothing to which the failure 
or success of my attempt makes the slightest difference, then 
indeed a dark and cruel blight would fall upon my soul. 

“To that blight I may have to submit. But I will not submit 
until I have tested the universe in the only way that is open to 
me. I will trust it as a friend. There are those about me 
who say that my trust will not be betrayed, having made the 
same experiment themselves. They remind me that the 
world I am living in is not any kind of world, but just the 
one particular kind needed by a soul whose business it is to 
create new values, in the way of Truth, Beauty and Good- 
ness... . I will base my life on the assumption that some- 
where, in the height above or in the depth below, Power is 
waiting to back me up. That Power, if I find it, shall be my 
God. 

“A person who reasons with himself in this manner is tak- 
ing the most practical, and the wisest means I know of to 
determine the question whether God exists. For my own part 
{ should view his experiment with hope proportioned to his 
sincerity. Frankly, I should expect him to make discovery of 
the Living God, as a reality, as a companion, as a friend. 
Whether to the reality, companion, friend, so discovered he 
gave the name ‘God,’ or some other name, I should not regard 
as a matter of supreme importance. If he chose to call it 
Christ, or more simply ‘the Spirit,’ I should not quarrel with 
him. The discovery is far too momentous to be imperilled for 
a name. Its value lies not in its name but in its reality. ‘Few 
things are easier,’ says John Henry Newman, ‘than to use 
the name of God and mean nothing by it.’ Call it then by a 
name which means something, and not by a name which 
means nothing.” 


THROUGH EXPERIENCE TO GOD 535 


Oneness in experience, not oneness in faith, is the bond of 
unity among Christians. We cannot think that the time ever 
will come when the knowledge and interpretations of God 
will be the same on the part of all men. Differences in degrees 
of knowledge and variations in conceiving and interpreting 
God will always be found among men, even among men 
equally intelligent and equally religious. The bond of unity 
in religion that can be looked for among men, and this no 
matter how widely they differ in knowledge, is to be found in 
religious experience, and this, if it be sane and normal and 
healthy, will show itself in readiness to co-operate with others 
of like mind and heart in all wise and helpful forms of Chris- 
tian service. The history of religion, says Professor E. S. 
Ames of Chicago University, shows that, however necessary 
it is in religion to believe in God in some true and worthy 
sense and to recognise his government of the world, it is not 
absolutely essential to religion to have a doctrine of God 
that is either logically consistent or intellectually satisfactory. 
Fortunately our religious experience is not dependent on our 
theology. The branches are many, but they all find vital and 
essential unity in the vine. In Christ the Vine all genuine 
Christian experience finds its unity. 

The following beautiful verses by Archbishop R. C. French 
make for our thoughts a natural and easy passage to the sub- 
ject which we are to consider in the next chapter: 


I say to thee, do thou repeat 
To the first man thou mayest meet 
In lane, highway, or open street,— 


That he, and we, and all men, move 
Under a canopy of love 
As broad as the blue sky above; 


That doubt and trouble, fear and pain 
And anguish, are all shadows vain, 
That death itself shall not remain; 


That weary deserts we may tread, 
A dreary labyrinth may thread, 
Through dark wavs underground be led, 


536 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Yet if we will our Guide obey 
The dreariest path, the darkest way 
Shall issue out in heavenly day; 


And we on divers shores now cast 
Shall meet, our perilous voyage past 
All in our Father’s house at last. 


CHAPTER [TWENTY 


THROUGH SUFFERING AND DEATH 
TO GOD 





CuarterR TwrEenty 
THROUGH SUFFERING AND DEATH TO GOD 


I 
THE DIVINE SIGNIFICANCE OF SUFFERING 


A pathway to God which Christ has made luminous with 
love, and which he has made forever sacred for pilgrim feet 
to tread, is that which leads through sacrifice and suffering. 
The superficial observer at the crucifixion said that if God 
were Christ’s Father, he would not let his divine Son suffer, 
but would speedily take him down from the cross. The Roman 
centurion took a different view of the situation. It was not 
until the centurion saw Christ’s sufferings and death on the 

Cross and its accompaniments that he got a vision of God 
in that transaction and exclaimed, “Verily this was the Son 
of God!” No man ever reaches the length or breadth of his 
manhood, or ascends to the height of his personality until he 
descends to the depths of his being in suffering. A man may 
behold where God dwells, and see and know something of him 
without having suffered, but not until he gets that vision of 
God that comes in and through suffering, can he know God 
fully. It is through the smoked glass that we can best see 
the sun. 

God is love, but not until God revealed his love in the sacri- 
ficial gift of his Son, and the Son of God revealed his love in 
the sufferings of the Cross, was there a revelation of the 
breadth and length and depth and height of the heart of God, 
which made it possible for us to “know the love of Christ 
which passeth knowledge,” and to be “filled with all the ful- 
ness of God.” Find the man if you can, who, in the faithful 
discharge of his duty, has sacrificed and suffered most for his 
Lord and for his fellow men, and you will likely find the man 


who knows most of God, and whose love for his fellow men 
539 


540 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


is most like that of Christ. It is in the school of suffering 
that we learn most of God. Men have argued that if God were 
all good and all powerful, he would not allow the innocent to 
suffer; and the fact that good men do suffer is interpreted by 
those who argue thus as proving that God is either not all- 
good or not all-powerful. But the facts of experience and 
observation prove, on the contrary, that it is those who have 
suffered most in the discharge of duty who as a rule believe 
most profoundly in both the power and love of God. It is 
not without profound significance that the church of the 
redeemed is described as they who have come up through 
many and great tribulations and have washed their robes and 
made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 


1. Physical and Moral Evil Distinguished 


Evil that is suffered in the body or in the mind because of 
and resulting from its connection with the body is called 
physical. Moral evil is that which is done by a free agent 
when he acts contrary to a known moral law. A large pro- 
portion of the evils of the world involve both moral and phys- 
ical elements, That natural or physical evil (poverty, sick- 
ness, suffering and the like) is one of the mightiest agencies 
in the hands of God for restraining and correcting moral evil, 
and for working out moral and spiritual good to fallen and 
sinful men, admits of easy demonstration. For the bringing 
into existence of moral free agents, that is, of creatures ca- 
pable of sinning, God the Creator is wholly responsible; but 
for the existence of moral evil, sin, in the world, man, the moral 
free agent, is wholly responsible. God could prevent moral 
free agents who choose to sin from sinning only by uncreating 
them, or else by placing their wills under irresistible divine 
restraint and compulsion. But the latter method of controlling 
them would virtually destroy their real and true freedom; 
and if this were done, then not only all sin but all virtue and 
holiness as attributes of free beings would thereby be rendered 
impossible in men; for only such beings in a probationary 
state can put forth free holy volitions as can put forth free 
sinful volitions. 


THROUGH SUFFERING TO GOD 541 


If man had never sinned, we have every reason to believe 
there would never have been such a large providential use of 
natural or physical evil as at present prevails; and this because 
of the fact that a sinless and holy race of beings would 
not have needed the presence of natural evil to secure their 
highest moral development. But a fallen and sinful race do 
need such a disciplinary agency to bring them back to God 
and to develop holy character and secure from them the high- 

_est moral service. It is not true that sin is now always or 
even generally the immediate cause of an individual’s suffering 
physical evil, or that extraordinary suffering is a proof of 
extraordinary sin. “Master, who did sin,” asked the disciples, 
“this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus 
answered, ‘“‘Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: 
but that the works of God should be made manifest in him” 
(John ix. 1-3). Human suffering is for man’s spiritual good 
and for the Divine glory, as shown in working good out of evil 
—this is the explanation which the Master gives as to why 
natural evil is permitted or sent by God. It is not only a 
powerful but, in a world like ours, a necessary agency for the 
correction and cure of moral evil and for the spiritual develop- 
ment of fallen man. “Before I was afflicted I went astray; 
but now I observe thy word... . It is good for me that I 
have been afflicted; that 1 may learn thy statutes’’ (Psalms 
cxix. 67, 71); “Every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, 
that it may bring forth more fruit” (John xv. 2). The saintly 
and eminently useful men and women of history have, as a 
rule, had to undergo a severe discipline and to endure many and 
severe trials, and were made perfect only by their sufferings. 
It was in the experience of suffering that they came to know 
God more perfectly. Even the incarnate Son of God is 
declared to have been made perfect by suffering, and the per- 
fection of his redeeming work was accomplished only through 
suffering. “I, if I be lifted up,” he said, ‘‘will draw all men 
unto me;’” and he might have added, “If I be not lifted up in 
suffering, I cannot draw all men unto me.” Divine Providence 
thus turns much of the world’s natural and physical evil into 
moral good. 


542 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Constituted as human beings are, with physico-spiritual 
natures, with soul and body joined in a union indissoluble 
while this life of probation lasts, the two natures being so 
related to each other that what affects the one nature affects: 
the other also, it is impossible to detach physical suffering from 
the moral discipline and development of the soul that suffers. 
To beings so constituted the penalties for moral wrong-doing, 
to be most effective, will involve and must involve physical 
suffering. The wise parent often finds it necessary to inflict 
physical suffering of some kind upon a disobedient child; and 
civil governments have always found it necessary to enforce 
laws by physical punishment of some kind. The motive of the 
parent in administering physical punishment is wholly moral, 
and the end he has in view is not to inflict physical suffering 
for its own sake, but wholly for the moral good he hopes to 
accomplish in the development of character in the child. In 
like manner when civil governments make laws and affix 
physical punishment for the violation of them, the motive and 
the end in view can not be regarded as other than moral. 
God is at once our Creator and Father, and Governor. In his 
wisdom he has seen fit to make us not disembodied spirits like 
the angels, but physico-moral beings whose probation and 
training and moral development shall take place in an em- 
bodied state, with body and soul conjoined and vitally related 
to each other. 

Men universally make a large and wide distinction between 
the physical and the spiritual, between the suffering of the body 
and the purely moral discipline of the soul, but with God it 
is all one—it is all moral in its motive and end. Viewed in 
this light the dispensation of physical suffering may be re- 
garded as an indispensable part of God’s one great, comprehen- 
sive moral government of the world. The near-sighted child, 
suffering for his disobedience, and the convicted criminal, 
suffering the penalty of the law he has violated, may each 
think only of the physical suffering he is undergoing, but 
those who made the laws they are enforcing have most in 
mind the moral value of the physical suffering they are in- 
flicting. So it is with the all-wise heavenly Father and the 


THROUGH SUFFERING TO GOD 543 


all-righteous Legislator, Judge and Governor of the world, 
who sees all things physical and moral in their entirety and 
unity. God has made everything for man’s ultimate moral 
good, and physical and moral laws are so interlaced and inter- 
locked that all things work together for moral good to them 
that love God and their fellow men—and all who love God 
and their fellow men are “the called according to his pur- 
pose.” 


2. Moral Evil as Related to God and Human Free Will 


Three of the attributes of God are of such pre-eminent im- 
portance in thinking of moral and physical evil and of God’s 
relation to our world as its Creator and Governor—omnis- 
cience, omnipotence and goodness—that they call for special 
consideration by every one who seeks to explain the presence 
of sin and suffering in our world. God possesses full knowl- 
edge of all events, whether past, present, or to come, which 
knowledge makes all time an eternal now to him. His knowl- 
edge manifests its superhuman and divine quality most truly 
in that he foreknows how free agents in the exercise of their 
liberty are going to put forth their volitions. His power in 
like manner is without limitation; but some things are im- 
possible even to omnipotence. Whatever is a contradiction 
in thought is an impossibility in execution, and it is no limita- 
tion of power in God to say that he cannot do that which in- 
volves a contradiction in thought. He cannot make a thing to 
be and not to be at one and the same time. He cannot make 
a free agent and give him a free will, with self-determining 
power, and, while that free agent is yet exercising his free will, 
compel him to will and to do that which he does not in and 
of himself will to do, without in so doing taking away from 
him his free agency and changing him from an agent into a 
passive tool, something that is acted upon. And it matters 
not whether this nullification of a free agent’s free will were 
brought about by divine Power acting upon him ab intra and 
compelling him to will, or by acting ab extra and over-power- 
ing his will—the nullification of free agency would be just the 
same in either case. 


544 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


When God, therefore, made moral free agents with self- 
determining power of will to do right or wrong as they should 
choose, he so far limited himself in that he conditioned his 
government of free beings on their own exercise of their free. 
wills. Freedom to do right carries along with it necessarily 
freedom to do wrong. This much it is necessary to say con- 
cerning God’s attribute of power, for in so doing we indicate 
the method that must be followed to explain the origin and 
continued existence of moral evil as involved in the very nature 
of moral free agency. Not the necessity of moral evil, but 
only the possibility of it is essential to free agency. For mak- 
ing free moral agents with the power and possibility of sin- 
ning, God is responsible; for the actuality of sin the free agent 
is alone responsible. The vindication of God’s morai char- 
acter, then, depends upon our being able to show that it is 
better to have a world with a race of free agents in it, even 
though some of them abuse their free agency and sin, than it 
is to have a world that should have in it no rational and moral 
creatures, no creatures higher than the lower animals. But 
every man who rejoices in the fact that he has been given ex- 
istence—existence, not as a lump of clay, not as a tree of the 
forest, not as a beast of the field, but as a man endowed with 
reason and moral free agency, involving the possibility of sin 
with all its consequences—every such man not only vindicates 
the wisdom of God in what he has done in making the human 
race, but also vindicates his goodness, holiness and love, in 
spite of the fact that there is sin in the world. 

It thus appears that God is not only omniscient, possessed 
of all knowledge, and omnipotent, possessed of all power, but 
he is also infinite in goodness; and this means that his provi- 
dential government of the world is so executed that he does, 
when all things are taken into consideration, the very best 
that can be done even by omnipotence to promote the happiness 
and well being of all his creatures. And I have given this 
special consideration to the omniscience, omnipotence and 
goodness of God because of the fact that the many questions 
that are being raised to-day concerning the existence and 
character of God have been precipitated largely by the difh- 


THROUGH SUFFERING TO GOD 545 


culty many people are having in reconciling the origin and 
continued existence of moral evil and also of physical suffering 
with these three divine attributes. If God was to have the 
highest order of being in his created universe, there must needs 
be rational and moral free agents, that is, beings who could 
sin. But no free agent is under the necessity of sinning; if 
he sins, he does so freely. Man suffers physically whether 
he will or no; but man sins only as he wills to do so. 


3. Physical Evil as Related to God—the Educative and Moral 
Value of Suffering 


In considering the ills that flesh is heir to and the sufferings 
of animate caused by inanimate nature, as these ills are related 
to God, we do well to begin by calling attention to the fact that 
nature is our sternest but best teacher, and we learn from 
her—and in no small degree because of her very severity— 
more lessons than we learn from all our other teachers com- 
bined; and these lessons are none the less real and effective 
because we are often unconscious for the time being of the 
extent and value of the lessons we are learning. It is from 
nature and the sufferings she inflicts upon those who disregard 
her laws that man learns the most beneficent of all lessons— 
that he conquers by obedience and commands by obeying. 
The sufferings which nature inflicts on man educates him in 
humanity; and the very inhumanity of nature makes man 
humane. The volcano and the earthquake and the flood and 
the pestilence and other ills of nature, from which man suffers 
so often and so largely, open the floodgates of human 
sympathy and beneficence, and teach men, over against the 
selfish communism of the world which says “All thine is mine,” 
the real and true communism of human brotherhood and 
Christian altruism which says “All mine is thine.” 

This truth has rarely been so well stated as by Dr. Fair- 
bairn whose words will strongly reinforce what we have 
here said: 


“The precept may be wholly moral, but the sanction, whether 
held to be penal, disciplinary, incidental, or vindicative, must 


546 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


be largely physical. This means that the law which appears | 


to us two-fold—as moral, a precept we can obey, a command 


. 


{ 


we can resist, and as physical, a penalty or a consequence we — 


must suffer—may appear as a unity, that is, as a law wholly 
moral to the Creator, who must see and read our complex — 


life in its context, with the physical penetrating the moral, 
the moral affecting the physical, both reciprocally active and 
inter-dependent. Hence the distinction that is so obvious to us 
may have no being for God. Where the moral attributes are 
sovereign, the view of the universe will be imperatively moral; 
and so what we regard as physical suffering may seem to him 
who sees the whole as a whole altogether ethical in function 
and value. 

“Tt thus appears that, however moral and physical evil, or 
moral and physical law, may appear to us, they stand or- 
ganically related as one in the mind of him who made and 
who governs nature and man. Were suffering an end in it- 
self, it would imply the ferocity of him who either allowed it 
to be or himself inflicted it; but were there no suffering for 
wrong-doing, moral evil would live a sort of unchallenged 
and authorised life... . The most remarkable thing in suf- 
fering is not its extent or duration, its intensity or immensity, 
but its educative, regenerative and propulsive force, its power 
to make man conscious of his enormous responsibilities and to 
awaken in him the desire to fulfil them. So conceived physical 
evil may be described as a divine energy for moralising man 
and nature. This is, if not its main function, yet its chief 
resulta 


4. The “Acts of God” Misinter preted 


What we now regard as false interpretations of God and 
divine Providence not only characterised in some respects the 
theology of a former generation but some of these popular 
theological misconceptions became imbedded in the common 
legal statutes of the country. We cite as an instance of this 
the phrase “‘an act of God’’ as it appears in law, where it always 
refers to some disaster or misfortune or other unavoidable ill 
which has befallen an individual or a community, for which no 
man can be held responsible and culpable. Nothing beneficent 


1 “Philosophy of Christian Religion,” pp. 164-167. 





THROUGH SUFFERING TO GOD 547 


and advantageous that happens to an individual or a com- 


munity is ever referred to in the law books as “an act of God.” 


_ And it is interesting to note that the reaction against this 


misinterpretation of God is to be seen not only among theo- 
logians and religious writers but among those who write for 


secular journals. This cannot perhaps be better shown than 


by quoting the following short paragraphs which appeared as 
an editorial in a recent issue of a Southern daily paper: 


“The loss of the United States destroyers on the Pacific 


Coast is being duly investigated by the Navy Department with 


the indications that it will finally be charged off to profit and 
loss as ‘an act of God.’ These words have a time-honoured 
legal significance, and merely mean the result of the havoc of 
the elements or a natural catastrophe. 

“They have been embalmed in judicial verbiage as ex- 
pressive of calamity unavoidable by man, but their use serves 
as an interesting reminder of how the creature regards his 
Creator. 

“In the development of human reverence gods were things 
to fear long before they were objects of love. The early 
sacrifices were to appease the anger of a deity whose strong 
hand might at any time smite an individual or a people. The 
good things of life, thinks Caliban, if he thinks about them at 
all, might just have happened. ‘The fruit of the trees and 
their shade may be the result of concomitant stray chances, 
but if the same tree falls upon Caliban that is expressive of 
divine wrath. 

“The technical term used by the law is a monument to how 
we take the good things for granted and charge our Creator 
with the bad. Wise old Job knew better and considered the 
good as well as the ill which befell him as emanating from the 
same source. His comforters and his foolish wife were cer- 
tain that his boils were a visitation from Jehovah, no matter 
where his former prosperity had come from. 

“Hurricanes and tidal waves, earthquakes and lightning, are 
classified in the law books as ‘acts of God.’ The shower and 
the zephyr, the dewfall and the sunshine are not so classified. 
All of which tends to show how short a time it has been since 
our religion, in spite of the words and life of its founder, in- 
fluenced us chiefly by fear.” 


548 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Quite in keeping with this are the words of a recent writer 
in a religious journal : 


“Tt is a most significant change which has come over our 
generation, when an ‘act of God,’ such as has moved former 
generations to hopeless panic or to search for the malignities 
of ‘divine’ vengeance, prompt such meditations as those to 
which our philosophers and publicists and the public press are 
now given. Already there are very few events which catch 
us altogether unawares. Carelessness and disregard of the 
plain behests of knowledge already attained lie back of prac- 
tically every calamity which befalls either the individual or 
society. Nature is not spleenful. She works in very orderly 
fashion and takes no delight in making havoc of our affairs. 
God is not ‘out gunning’ for the unwary or the wicked. Our 
lives are shortened for the most part by preventable disease. 
There are precious few ‘accidents’ in human experience. The 
slaughter wrought by automobiles is folly, sheer, almost 
entirely unadulterated human folly—either behind the steering 
wheel or before the radiator. Even earthquakes are not an 
‘inscrutable providence.’ They have no ‘meaning,’ except that 
which all human experiences have, or are intended to have. 
We are finding a finer and richer divinity in human life, in 
the degree in which the inscrutable ‘acts of God’ are banished 
from both our legal terminology and from the organisation 
of personal and social life.” * 


5. Good and Evil as Interpreted by Optimism and Pessimism 


“This is the best of all possible worlds,” said Leibnitz. ‘An 
infinite multitude of possible worlds lay before the vision of 
God. Evil was involved in every one which he conceived as 
possible, but out of all this infinitude of possibilities he selected 
for realisation the best possible. As absolutely good and wise 
he could select no other. And this world he selected, not be- 
cause of its evil, but in spite of its evil, resolved to overrule 
the evil, which was inseparable from created being, to its 
greater good and his own greater glory. The only alterna- 
tives, therefore, were not between a more and a less imperfect 
world, but between the best possible world and no world at all. 


1 The Christian Century, Sept. 21, 1923. 


THROUGH SUFFERING TO GOD 549 


If there was to be no evil, there must be no creation; if God 
chose to create, he had no choice but to create the meta- 
physically imperfect, that is, those capable of suffering and of 
doing evil.’ * 

Pessimism, on the other hand, maintains that if this is 
not the worst possible world, it is at least so bad that it would 
have been better to have had no world at all. It is something 
that had better never have been; and, since it cannot be 
mended, it ought to be ended. We cannot think of any sane, 
righteous and healthy-minded man as taking this view of life. 
“To speak of non-existence” says a thoughtful and judicious 
critic of pessimism, “‘as better than existence or to speak of 
the world as so bad that it had better never have been, is to say 
what no man of healthy mind can be got in the heart of him, 
or in his higher and better moments, to believe.’’ Of this type 
of philosophy the distinguished German writer, Arthur 
Schopenhauer, is the recognised exponent. It is much to be 
regretted that an intellect so able and brilliant could not have 
been devoted to the development of a constructive philosophy 
rather than one that is destructive of all that makes life worth 
living.’ 

There is an optimism which is superficial and lighthearted 
and unwarranted in view of the conditions that exist, or may 
exist, because it shuts its eyes to the immensity and intensity of 
the ills that are in the world and to the suffering and misery 
which they cause; and, blind to these ills, it does nothing to 
remove them. On the other hand, there may come evil times 
and conditions when pessimism may be fully justified—that 
is, when things are evil, and only evil continually, and are 
growing worse and worse; times when, unless the forces of 
evil that prevail and are on the increase are met and overcome, 
things will inevitably go not only to the bad but to their worst. 


1Leibnitz, “Essais de Theodicee,” p. 199. Fairbairn, “Philosophy of 
the Christian Religion,” p. 105. 

2 Schopenhauer’s best-known disciple was Von Hartmann concerning 
whom Strauss, the destructive New Testament critic, made the facetious 
observation: “Yon Hartmann says that this world is so bad that none 
would have been better. Von Hartmann’s philosophy is part of the world 
que as such it is so bad that it would have been better if it had never 

een. 


550 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


This type of pessimism, fully warranted by conditions, often 
marked the messages of the Hebrew prophets and led them to 
cry out and spare not; and it was only because they saw things 
evil as they really were, and the inevitable outcome thereof, 
that their hearts and tongues flamed forth with a passion for 
righteousness and found expression in messages that aroused, 
and, by arousing, saved the nation. It is only when optimism 
sees things as they are, and sees things whole and in their 
entirety, that it becomes the true and worthy attribute of a 
prophet of righteousness and prepares him for moral leader- 
ship. Optimism is inherent in the faith of theism because the 
Christian theist is he who believes that this world is governed 
by a personal God who, while he works in and through men, 
and may tarry long because of his workers, yet doeth accord- 
ing to his will in the armies of heaven and among the in- 
habitants of the earth. 

An optimist has much and frequent need of patience, of 
the very patience of God. “He that believeth will not make 
haste;’ nor will he allow himself to grow needlessly discour- 
aged while waiting for the good to triumph over the evil 
that is often rampant. ‘The pessimistic mood is never very 
remote from any of us,” a distinguished Christian scholar has 
well said; and even the best of men is liable to be so over- 
come by a vision of the sins and iniquities that sometimes pre- 
vail among the wicked, and by the indifference and lethargy 
that may characterise the good, that, for the time being at 
least, the pendulum swings to the zero point on the dial, and 
he is tempted to lose heart and give up the fight. 

There are “black Fridays” and “blue Mondays” that come 
into the lives of even the best and saintliest of men; and some 
days an ill wind blows from the East, and its wings are full 
of the quills of porcupines, and there is nothing to do but let 
it blow until the compass changes. And it will change, and 
the change for the brighter and better day will come soonest 
to him who believes and loves while he waits. There are some 
days when it takes more grace and endurance to be quiet and 
wait, than it does on other days to achieve great things in the 
realm of the spiritual life. No man ought to write his creed 


THROUGH SUFFERING TO GOD 551 


on a “black Friday,” or a “blue Monday,” or when the “East 
wind” is blowing. The real and true man is the man at his 
best. And when a normal Christian man is at his best, he 
always believes profoundly in the overruling providence of an 
all-wise, all-good and all-powerful God, and loves to think of 
him then as the all-loving Father. Faith in the omnipotence 
of love is the foundation of optimism. 

No truth concerning Divine Providence is more comfort- 
ing than to know that God not only rules, but overrules; and, 
although in a world of moral free agents it must needs be that 
men individually and collectively can and do act contrary to his 
will, there are bounds beyond which human free agency can- 
not go. Although much that happens in our world is not 
according to his will and not due to his ruling, there are no 
realms of creaturely existence where God cannot and does not 
overrule. Though all things human disappoint us and fail, 
his overruling power and providence will never fail. His 
overruling providence, therefore, is the guarantee that all 
things shall be made to work for good to them that love God 
and that prove the purity and sincerity of their love for him by 
the way they love and serve their fellow men. This faith 
alone can make it possible for us to sing with Browning: 


God’s in his heaven, 
And all’s right with the world. 


“The faith that grows from more to more in the individual 
soul, and that strengthens itself from generation to generation 
in the community,’ says Dr. Borden P. Bowne, “is that we 
are in our Father’s hands, and that, having brought us thus far 
on our God-ward way, he may well be trusted to finish the 
work he has begun. As long as this faith remains, men will 
go on singing hymns, praying prayers, and chanting Te Deums 
in the face of the grim and disquieting aspects of experience; 
but if this faith should ever permanently perish there would 
be an end of all optimism.” 


552 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


6. Suffering and Song 


It has passed into a proverb that the poets learn in suffering 
what they teach in song. The songs of the ages, the great 
hymns of the heart, were not written by the poets for mere 
pastime, but, as a rule, were born of experiences the deepest 
that human souls are ever called to pass through. 

Possibly of all afflictions that befall human beings the loss 
of sight would be accounted the greatest; and yet among the 
sons and daughters of affliction there are no sufferers who, as 
a Class, illustrate more beautifully the divine uses of adversity 
and the beneficent results of a cheerful acquiescence in the 
providence that permits misfortunes, than do the blind. Possi- 
bly there is no blind person that ever lived that has contributed 
altogether so much to the spiritual comfort and happiness of 
others as did Fanny Crosby, the blind poetess, who wrote more 
Christian hymns than any woman that ever lived—and more 
than any man that ever lived with the one exception of Charles 
Wesley. It was her serene trust and cheerful faith in God 
that was the secret of her power to minister to others and 
inspire them with her songs; and she lets us into this secret in 
her hymn beginning “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine” :— 


Perfect submission, perfect delight, 
Visions of rapture now burst on my sight, 
Angels descending, bring from above, 
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love. 


Perfect submission, all is at rest, 

Tin my Saviour am happy and blest, 
Watching and waiting, looking above, 
Filled with his goodness, lost in his love. 


This is my story, this is my song, 
Praising my Saviour all the day long! 


Some one, speaking to Frances Ridley Havergal once of 
Fanny Crosby’s blindness, added: “But her heart can see.” 
This called forth from the gifted poetess and hymn-writer of 
England a beautiful tribute in verse to her blind sister across 


THROUGH SUFFERING TO GOD 553 


the sea, from which we quote (in a somewhat condensed and 
slightly altered form) the following lines: 


How can she sing in the dark like this? 
What is her fountain of light and bliss? 
With never the light of a loving face, 
Must not the world be a desolate place? 


Oh, her heart can see, her heart can see! 
And its sight is strong and swift and free. 
Never the ken of mortal eye 

Could pierce so deep and far and high 
As the eagle vision of hearts that dwell 
In that lofty, sunlit citadel. 


For the King himself, in his tender grace, 
Hath shown her the brightness of his face; 
She can read his law as a shining chart, 
For his finger hath written it on her heart; 
And she reads his love, for on all her way 
His hand is writing it every day. 

Oh, this is why she sings so free: 

Her heart can see, her heart can see! 


“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” 

' God seems to have more than compensated Fanny Crosby for 

the loss of her eyesight by giving her heart-sight and by re- 

vealing to her visions of spiritual light and moral beauty that 

are rarely ever given to mortals whose eyes are occupied with 
beholding the sights of the material world. 

Milton illustrated very beautifully the spirit of Christ in 
the way in which he bore the awful affliction that came to him 
in the loss of his sight. He makes frequent allusion to his 
blindness in his poems, and always in the sweet spirit of sub- 
mission to the will of God. This spirit of Christian resigna- 
tion in which commingling sorrow and joy are seen is very 
beautifully expressed in the familiar verses, titled ‘“Milton’s 
Last Poem,” which undertakes to describe the great poet’s 
feelings with reference to his blindness. It is an interpretative 
poem written by Elizabeth L. Howell. It is one of the most 
plaintive and tender little poems in the English language, and 


554 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


may well be quoted as showing how God in his Providence can 
and does work out of ill, sometimes at least, beneficent results 
that could be secured in no other way. It is not the less true, 
but perhaps all the more true because another than the poet him- » 
self wrote the words and put them into his mouth. 


I am old and blind! 
Men point at me as smitten by God’s frown, 
Afflicted and deserted by my mind, 

Yet Iam not cast down. 


I am weak; yet dying, 
I murmur not that I no longer see— 
Poor, old, and helpless I the more belong, 
Father supreme, to thee. 


Oh! merciful One, 
When men are farthest, then thou art most near, 
When men pass coldly by, my weakness shun, 

Thy chariot wheels I hear. 


Thy glorious face 
Is leaning toward me, and its holy light 
Shines in upon my lonely dwelling place, 
And there is no more night. 


On my bended knee, 

I recognise thy purpose clearly shown: 

My vision thou hast dimmed that I might see 
Thyself—thyself alone. 


I have naught to fear: 
This darkness is the shadow of thy wing; 
Beneath it I am almost sacred—here 

Can come no evil thing. 


Oh! I seem to stand 
Trembling where the feet of mortal never yet had been, 
Wrapped in the radiance of that sinless land 

Which eye hath never seen. 


Visions come and go, 
Shapes of resplendent beauty round me throng, 
From angel lips I seem to hear the flow 

Of soft and holy song. 


THROUGH DEATH TO GOD 555 


It is nothing now, 
When heaven is opening on my sightless eyes, 
When airs from paradise refresh my brow, 
That earth in darkness lies. 


In a pure clime 
My being fills with rapture; waves of thought 
Roll in upon my spirit; strains sublime 

Break over me unsought. 


Give me now my lyre! 
I feel the stirrings of a gift divine; 
Within my bosom glows unearthly fire, 
Lit by no hand of mine. 


But not to the blind alone, but to all sufferers God has 
vouchsafed a revelation of himself that can come through no 
other channel and in no other experience than that of suffering. 
The sufferings of life, by forcing men into an acquaintance 
with Him for whom the human heart instinctively cries out in 
all times of sore distress and need, and by revealing Him as 
a “very present help in time of trouble,” tend to prepare men 
for calling upon Him in their encounter with the last enemy 
to be conquered, an encounter which is rarely ever free from 
suffering of the most intense and trying kind—the sufferings 
incident to the departure of the soul from the body. From 
the dying lips of those alone who believe in God do words 
of triumph come in that last encounter: “thanks be unto God 
that giveth us the victory!” 


II 
THE DIVINE SIGNIFICANCE OF DEATH 


Human life both in its end and in its origin is shrouded in 
mystery. But for a thing to be enveloped in mystery does not 
mean that it is without divine significance and high spiritual 
value. The profoundest facts’ and truths concerning God’s 
nature and providence are characterised by mystery; and there 
is no phase of human life where it approaches so near to the 
mystery that belongs to Deity as in its extension beyond death 


556 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


into the realm of pure spirits that are subject to none of the 
limitations of matter and of time as we know them here. If 
it be true, as Christianity teaches, that the highest significance 
of this life grows out of the fact that it is a state in which we 
are to prepare for another world, for a higher and more perfect 
state of existence, then it cannot be a misnomer to call death 
a pathway, indeed a very doorway, to God. It behooves the 
Christian philosopher, therefore, to contemplate death most 
calmly of all men in order that he may interpret it wisely and 
truly as befits one who believes it to be a revealer of God. 


1. Death as a Revealer of God and Immortality 


If this life in the flesh did not end, there would and could, 
of course, be for us no other life; if this world were our eternal 
abiding place, there could be for us no other world. The dis- 
tinction between mortality and immortality would be obliter- 
ated. If this life and this world satisfied all our desires and 
the needs of body, mind and spirit, there would be no need for 
another life and another world. But none of these conditions 
are true of this life. There is never a birth into this life that is 
not followed in the course of a few years by death; and of all 
the facts appertaining to this life none is altogether so serious 
and impressive to the individual as the death that brings this 
life to an abrupt and absolute end. And as to this world being 
an abiding place, it is, on the contrary, a world where every- 
thing is always changing and moving on and being trans- 
formed into something in some way different from what it 
now is. This life and this world do not, except for brief and | 
occasional periods, fully satisfy any living soul; and the satis- 
faction which one feels in these brief sporadic spells of exist- 
ence is due in no small degree to the fact that something is 
then and there singing to the soul within that “it is better 
further on.” 

It is death that gives us the idea of deathlessness; and 
makes us serious and thoughtful and appreciative of blessings 
while they last, and desirous of making the most and the best 
of this life, and especially so in so far as this life is related to 
and determinative of our lot in another life and another world. 





THROUGH DEATH TO GOD 557 


It takes the darkness of night to reveal to us the greatness of 
our universe and show us worlds of light that we could 
never see by day. Every grave that is opened is a window 
through which we look not down but up and beyond into the 
life eternal. We purchase deathlessness with death, and only 
by dying can we pay the price of immortality. It is the death 
of our loved ones and the ever-present certainty that death 
awaits us that makes us think of and long for a life that is 
lasting and a world where the limitations of this life are lifted 
and there is unalloyed fulness of joy. 

As the idea of the finite in space necessitates the thought of 
the infinite, so the idea of the finite in time necessitates the 
thought of the eternal; and infinity and eternity are meaningless 
without an infinite and eternal Personality. And thus it is 
that our very mortality reveals to us the life immortal and 
the Being who alone has immortality in himself and can give 
it to other beings. But while these rational meditations on and 
inferences from mortality and death reveal God and immor- 
tality to us, and while it is true that 


“A solemn murmur of the soul 
Tells of a world to be, 

As travellers hear the billows roll 
Before they reach the sea—” 


it is also true that it is Christ who alone has brought to light 
in the Gospel a sure, steady and satisfying doctrine of life and 
immortality. And when he discoursed on the Father’s house 
of many mansions and described the highest happiness of 
heaven for his disciples by saying that “where I am there ye 
may be,” he was but declaring that death is in the highest and 
truest sense to every Christian pilgrim the gateway at the end 
of a path that leads inevitably to God. 


2. The Why of Physical Death—Its Moral and Educa- 
tive Value 


The theistic philosopher, who alone can give an adequate and 
satisfactory explanation of death in its spiritual significance, 
does not minify its sorrow or its horror in recognising its 


558 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


essential place in the purpose and government of God. The 
Christian philosopher interprets it thus :— 


“The awful cruelty of death lies in its not only ending one’s 
own life, but in so often making desolate innocent and help- 
less lives that would otherwise be happy. If it were one’s own 
loss only, it would be possible to die like a stoic without a 
murmur and without a tear. It is the desolation of the living 
that is so painful to thought, turning death into the sum of all 
our miseries. But when all has been thought and said, why 
should death seem an evil? Birth is not, and surely death is 
but the complement and counterpart of birth. The one is be- 
cause the other is; it is because the grave is never full that the 
cradle is never empty. Then how without death could man 
realise the meaning of life? How feel the immensity, the 
possibilities, the god-like qualities, the capability of endless 
gain or loss contained within the terms of his own being? The 
picture of man before and after he knew death in the “Legend 
of Jubal’ is as true to experience as to imagination. In the 
old, soft, sweet days before men knew death, when all that 
was known of it was the single black spot in the memory of 
Cain, his descendants lived in gladsome idleness; they played, 
they sang, they loved, they danced, in a life that had no gravity 
and no greatness; but when the second death came, and men 
saw that there had come to one of their own race a sleep from 
which there was no awakening, a new meaning stole into life. 
The horizon which limited it defined it, and made it great. 
Time took a new value; affection, by growing more serious, 
became nobler; men thought of themselves more worthily and 
of their deeds more truly when they saw that a night came 
when no man could work. Friends and families lived in a 
tenderer light when the sun was known to shine but for a 
season; earth became lovelier when they thought the place 
which knew them now would soon know them no more. The 
limit set to time drove their thoughts out towards eternity. 
The idea of the death, which was to claim them, bade them 
live in earnest, made them feel that there was something 
greater than play; for death had breathed into life the spirit 
out of which all tragic and all heroic things come.” 

“We see, therefore, that death has to be viewed not as a mat- 
ter of a single person, but of collective man; and it works out 


THROUGH DEATH TO GOD 559 


the good of collective man by doing no injustice to the indi- 
vidual, but rather using him to fulfil the highest function it is 
granted to mortal men to perform. So let us say that how- 
ever men may conceive death, it belongs to those sufferings by 
which mankind learns obedience, and is made perfect.” * 


Beautiful, indeed, as well as religiously and philosophically 
true are these words of Dr. A. M. Fairbairn concerning 
death. 


3. Death the Removal of Physical Limitations to Man’s 
Spiritual Activities 


Christian theism assumes that matter is not the creator and 
master of mind, but, on the contrary, the creature and servant 
of,mind; and that the body is not the maker of spirit, but 
rather something that was made for the spirit. The appeal to 
consciousness settles, as if with the authority of a ‘“‘cate- 
gorical imperative,’ not only the fact of man’s mind being 
more than matter, but the greater fact, that his spirit, though 
finite, is so immeasurably superior to his fleshly body that it 
bears as a divine birthright a claim to immortality. This being 
true, that event in the life of the spirit which we call death, 
the departure of the spirit from the fleshly body, it is not un- 
reasonable to suppose, will make possible a clearer vision of 
God and a closer fellowship with him than is possible during 
the ‘‘days of the flesh.”” Only after the veil of the flesh is re- 
moved will man be enabled to see God “‘face to face.”’ In other 
words the physical body, instead of being the condition and 
basis of life and thought and spiritual activities, is rather a 
limitation upon the full and perfect functioning of the spirit. 

This is one of the thoughts suggested by Professor William 
James’s little book titled “Human Immortality,’ where he 
refers to Kant “as coming very close to the transmission theory 
in his idea of the function of the brain in relation to thought 
and immortality. He held that the death of the body might, 
indeed, be the end of sense-perception and of the sensational 
use of the mind, but only the beginning of the strictly intel- 


1“The Philosophy of the Christian Religion.” 


560 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


lectual use—that the body would thus be not the cause of our 
thinking, but merely a condition restrictive thereof; and, 
although essential to our sensuous and animal consciousness, 
it might be regarded as impeding our pure spiritual life. 
According to this view the lower is explained by the higher, - 
matter by spirit, instead of vice versa, and thereby attains to 
an explanation which is ultimately tenable, instead of one 
which is ultimately absurd.”’* Professor James quotes from 
Schiller’s “Riddles of the Sphinx” the following statements 
setting forth the same idea as to the relation of mind to matter 
in the human body: 

“Matter is an admirably calculated machinery for regulating, 
limiting and restraining the consciousness which it en- 
cases. .. . If the material encasement be coarse and simple, 
as in the lower organisms, it permits only a little intelligence 
to permeate through it; if it is delicate and complex, it leaves 
more pores and exists, as it were, for the manifestations of 
consciousness . . . which permits us strange glimpses of a 
lucidity that divines the realities of the transcendent world. 
And this gives the final word to materialism; it consists in 
showing in detail . . . that materialism is a putting of the 
cart before the horse, which may be rectified by just inverting 
the connection between matter and consciousness. Matter is 
not that which produces consciousness, but that which limits it, 
and confines its intensity within certain limits; material organ- 
ism does not construct consciousness out of arrangements of 
atoms, but contracts its manifestations within the sphere which 
it permeates.”’ 

This being true, it follows that so long as man’s physical 
body encases and imprisons and conditions his spirit, it puts 
limitations upon all his spiritual activities. Regarding mind 
and thought from the theistic point of view, then, we may say 
that instead of being the product of the brain, they are rather 
limited by their connection with the brain, and whenever the 
connection between the spirit and body are broken—as, for 
instance, by the death of the body—the mind may find its 
power of thought, not destroyed as materialism declares to be 


1See J. W. Lee’s “Religion of Science,” pp. 225-6. 


THROUGH DEATH TO GOD 561 


the case, but greatly increased by the removal of the limitations 
of the body. If this be true, death, instead of ending all, is 
in reality the gateway to a larger life, and the beginning of the 
development of mind and the acquisition of knowledge under 
conditions infinitely superior to those existing in this fleshly 
life. The vision of God, then, here in the flesh is but as the 
moonlight is to the sunlight when compared with the vision we 
may hope to have of him in the future life that begins at death. 


4. God, Death and Immortality as Interpreted by the Poets 


Among men of letters they who believe most profoundly in 
God and personal immortality—and believe in the one because 
they believe in the other—are the poets. If there be some for 
whom death ends all, it is not the poets. 

To the poets all nature abounds in symbols that teach that 
what we call death is the gateway to and condition of “‘life that 
shall endless be.” This is the truth found in the following 
lines by Elizabeth Case that make inseparable faith in God and 
faith in continuous life: 


Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod, 
And waits to see it push away the clod, 
He trusts in God. 


Whoever sees ’neath field of winter snow, 
The silent harvest of the future grow, 
God’s power must know. 


Whoever says when clouds are in the sky, 
“Be patient, heart, light breaketh by and by,” 
Trusts the Most High. 


Whoever lies down on his couch to sleep, 
Content to lock each sense in slumber deep, 
Knows God will keep. 


Another poet has shown the inseparable connection between 
life and death in these beautiful words that are far-reaching 
in their significance: 


562 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


“Life evermore is fed by death, 
In earth and sea and sky, 

And that a rose may breathe its breath 
Something must die.” 


If this be true of death and life in the animal world, why ; 


should it be thought a thing less true of those higher physico- 
spiritual beings who in one element of their duplex nature 
are akin to the vegetable and animal world, and in the other are 
akin to God and the angels? The poets with their marvellous 
insight and deeply penetrating power of vision, and with their 
irrepressible passion for uttering the truths they feel and see, 
declare with one voice that “it is not death to die’’—that 
death is for those who are in harmony with God the divinely 
appointed gateway to the perfect and unending life, and this 
even when it is due to outrageous wrong done by wicked men. 

It is well for one who reads the story of Joseph and 
Pharaoh, or John the Baptist and Herod, or St. Stephen and 
Saul of Tarsus, to turn from history to a poet’s interpreta- 
tion of such events such as that found in the lines of James 
Russell Lowell which tell the great truth of how men of heroic 
and noble character who have suffered the most outrageous 
wrongs, instead of finding in their sufferings proof that God 
had forsaken them, have rather found themselves in the very 
presence of Him who is forever keeping a close watch above 
his own: 

Truth forever on the scaffold, 
Wrong forever on the throne, 
Yet that scaffold sways the future, 
And behind the dim unknown 


Standeth God within the shadow, 
Keeping watch above his own. 


W. W. Story closes his “Hymn of the Conquered Who Fell 
in the Battle of Life” with words that teach the same great 
lesson :— 


Speak, History! who are life’s victors? Unroll thy long annals and 
say, 

Are they those whom the world called the victors—who won the 
success of a day? 


ee —— 


THROUGH DEATH TO GOD 563 


The martyrs, or Nero? The Spartans, who fell at Thermopyle’s 
tryst. 

Or the Persians and Xerxes? His judges or Socrates? Pilate or 
Christ? 


Happy is he who has learned to read history with profound 
faith in the truth here expressed. 

Few if any are the poets who have written more beautifully 
of death as a gateway to God than has John Greenleaf Whit- 
tier. Many of his verses concerning death and the future life 
are so expressive of love and faith in God that they have be- 
come familiar throughout the civilised world; and this because 
they express not merely his own faith and feeling but the 
faith and feeling that characterise seekers after God every- 
where through all time. The life eternal to him is embosomed 
in divine love :— 


I know not what the future hath 
Of marvel or surprise, 

Assured alone that life and death 
His mercy underlies ; 

And if my heart and flesh are weak 
To bear the untried pain, 

The bruised reed He will not break, 
But strengthen and sustain. 


And so, beside the Silent Sea, 
I wait the muffled oar; 

No harm from Him can come to me, 
On ocean or on shore. 

I know not where His islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air, 

I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond His love and care. 


And Whittier believed that we shall not only see and know 
God in the life to come but that they who know and love their 
fellow men here will recognise and know and love each other 
in the world to come where spirits only dwell: 


Yet love will dream and faith will trust, 
Since he who knows our need is just, 
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. 


564 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Alas for him who never sees 

The stars shine through his cypress trees! 
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 

Nor looks to see the breaking day 

Across the mournful marble play! 


Who hath not learned in hours of faith, 
The touch to flesh and sense unknown, 
That Life is ever Lord of death, 
And Love can never lose its own. 


Whittier interpreted God, heaven and immortality all alike 
in terms of love :— 


Alone, O Love ineffable! 
Thy saving name is given; 

To turn aside from thee is hell, 
To walk with Thee is heaven! 


“In Memoriam” is in the truest sense a poem that constitutes 
for perplexed and troubled ‘souls a pathway to God. The 
divinity and immortality of love are its theme, and they are 
made all the more luminous because set on a dark background 
of death :—“‘Love can never lose its own; it is of God and can 
never die; those whom God loves can never cease to be, and 
those who are one with the God of love can never lose the 
objects of their affection; love must grow with our growth 
both here and hereafter.”’ This profound heartcry, as is well 
known, was called forth from the depths of the poet’s soul 
by the loss of his nearest and dearest friend, Arthur Henry 
Hallam, who died in 1833. The poet was plunged into the 
abysm of darkness and doubt. In the deep anguish of his 
bereaved soul the foundations were laid for this great poem. 
It was an awful struggle that he describes himself as passing 
through before he emerged with his feet upon the solid rock 
and this victorious song upon his lips. His faith and love now 
took hold on unseen and eternal things, took hold on God. 
It was through Christ that he won the victory, and his great 
poem has brought faith and light and victory to many others 
who have been plunged by the death of friends and loved ones 
into darkness and doubt. Among the verses that witness to 


THROUGH DEATH TO GOD 565 


his faith in the one God who was revealed in and through 
the divine Christ, are the following: 


Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 
Whom we, that have not seen thy face, 
By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 
Believing where we cannot prove; 


Thou wilt not leave us in the dust; 
Thou madest man, he knows not why, 
He thinks he was not made to die; 
And thou hast made him: thou art just. 


Thou seemest human and divine, 
The highest, holiest, manhood thou; 
Our wills are ours, we know not how; 
Our wills are ours to make them thine. 


Our little systems have their days; 
They have their day and cease to be; 
They are but broken lights of thee, 
And thou, O Lord, art more than they. 


One God, who ever lives and loves, 
One God, one law, one element, 
And one far-off divine event, 

To which the whole creation moves. 


The man who wrote thus of Christ in the prime of his 
young manhood was true to Christ all through his long and 
fruitful life, and his dying swan-song was a calm note of faith 
and victory that has won its way into the heart of the world. 
When asked just before his death what he desired most of all, 
his reply was “A new vision of God.” The “Strong Son of 
God” of the “In Memoriam”’ is the “Pilot” whom he confi- 
dently expected to see “face to face’ when he “crossed the 
bar’—and who can doubt that he saw him, and that he sees 
him still? 


Sunset and evening star, 
And one clear call for me! 

And may there be no moaning of the bar 
When I put out to sea. 


566 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 
Too full for sound and foam, 

When that which drew from out the boundless deep 
Turns again home. 


Twilight and evening bell, 
And after that the dark! 
And may there be no sadness of farewell 
When I embark; 
For though from out our bourne of time and place 
The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face 
When I have crossed the bar. 


5. The Confidence and Sunny Certainty of Christ 
Concerning the Future 


The poet modestly “hopes,” but St. Paul’s faith in the 
future life led him to say, “I know.” Nothing can be more 
assuring than the calm confidence and sunny certainty with 
which Christ speaks of the future life, which for the Christian 
believer he always associates with God and eternal companion- 
ship with himself. “In my Father’s house’; “that where I 
am there ye may be also.” The Christian believer is he who 
has “life,” who is already in possession of “eternal life.” 
Whatever may be our speculations concerning the future fate 
of those who have not in this life walked the paths that lead 
to God, who have not found God and lived in companionship 
with him, Christ has left us in no uncertainty as to the future 
of those who “believe in God and believe also in him.” “Tf 
it were not so, I would have told you’’—a word this of in- 
finite significance. There is no doctrine of the Christian re- 
ligion more certain and assuring than this—that they who in 
this life travel the paths that lead to God will find death a 
doorway into not another but a higher life, where they will, 
with the eyes of the spirit, see God “face to face” and be with 
him forever. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY AND INDEX 





BIBLIOGRAPHY 


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569 


570 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


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FAIRBAIRN, A. M.: Philosophy of the Christian Religion. 

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FLInt, R.: Theism. 

ForsyTHE, P. T.: Christ on Parnassus; The Principle of Authority; 
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GALLowAyY, CHARLES B.: The Evidential Value of Modern Missions. 

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Garviz, A. E.: Handbook of Christian Apologetics. 

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GLADDEN, WASHINGTON: Who Wrote the Bible? 

Gorpon, G. A.: Through Man to God; The Christ of To-day; The 
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Hate, G. E.: The Depths of the Universe. 

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Hays, D. A.: The Synoptic Problem; Paul and His Epistles; John 
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Jacks, L. P.: Religious Perplexities; A Living Universe. 

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Kent, Cuartes F.: The Origin and Permanent Value of the Old 
Testament. | 

KeErN, J. A.: A Study of Christiamty as Organized; The Idea of the 
Church. 

Kine, H. C.: Reconstruction in Theology; A New Mind for the New 
Age. 

Kirkpatrick, A. F.: The Divine Library of the Old Testament. 


LAMBETH CONFERENCE—Report on Reunion of the Churches. 
LAMBUTH, WALTER R.: The Winning of the World for Christ. 


572 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Ler, J. W.: The Religion of Science. 
LersnitTz, G. W.: Essays on Theodicy. 
LyncuH, Frepertck: The Problem of Christian Unity. 


MackinTosH, H. R.: Some Aspects of Christian Belief ; Immortality. 
and the Future. 

Mains, G. P.: Modern Thought and Traditional Faith; Religious 
Experience. 

MatTHEws, SHAILER: The Church and the Changing Order; The 
Gospel and the Modern Man. 

MArTINEAU, JAMES: The Seat of Authority in Religion. 

McComas, H. C.: The Psychology of the Religious Sects. 

McConneLt, F. J.: Personal Christianity; Is God Linuted?; Public 
Opinion and Theology. 

McCosH, JAMES: Typical Forms and S pecial Ends in Creation; 
Christianity and Positivism. 

McDoweE Lt, W. F.: In the School of Christ. 

McGtrrert, A. C.: The God of the Early Christians; Rise of M odern 
Religious Ideas. 

Mitiikan, R. A.: Science and Life. 

Moors, G. F.: The Birth and Growth of Religion. 

Moutton, W. J.: The Certainty of God. 

Movuzon, E. D.: Does God Care? 

Murer, Max: The Origin and Growth of Religion. 

Mutuins, E. Y.: Why Is Christianity True? 


Orr, JAMES: Revelation and Inspiration; The Virgin Birth. 


PALMER, FREDERICK: The Virgin Birth. 

Parks, L.: What Is Modernism? 

Patton, C. S.: Religion in the Thought of To-day. 
PEAKE, A. S.: Christianity, Its Nature and Its Truth. 
Pore, W. B.: Compendium of Christian Theology. 
Purpy, A. C.: Pathways to God. 


Quick, O. C.: Christian Beliefs and Modern Questions. 


RAuUSCHENBUSCH, W.: The Theology of the Social Gospel. 

Rice, J. A.: The Old Testament in the Life of To-day. 

Rice, W. N.: Christian Faith in an Age of Science. 

Ricuarps, G. W.: Christian Ways of Salvation. 

Rosertson, A. T.: Teaching of Jesus Concerning God the Father; 
Paul the Interpreter of Christ. 

Rocers, A. K.: The Religious Conception of the World. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 573 


Rocers, R. W.: The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria. 
RomANES, G. J.: Thoughts on Religion. 

Ross, G. A. Jounston: The God We Trust. 

Royce, Jostan: The World and the Individual. 
RussELL, B.: Mysticism and Logic. 


SABATIER, AUGUSTE: Outline of a Philosophy of Religion; Religions 
of Authority and Religions of the Spirit. 

Sanpay, W.: Divine Overruling. 

ScHAFF, Purtip: The Creeds of Christendom. 

SHater, N. S.: The Interpretation of Nature. 

SELLECK, W. C.: The New Appreciation of the Bible. 

SHaw, A. M.: Shorten the Line. 

SHaw, C. G.: Christianity and Modern Culture. 

SHeEpp, W. G. T.: Dogmatic Theology. 

SHELDON, H. C.: History of Christian Doctrine; The Essentials of 

_ Christianity. 

SHELTON, W. A.: Dust and Ashes of Empires. 

Stmeson, J. Y.: The Spiritual Interpretation of Nature; Man and the 
Attainment of Immortality. 

SmitH, Georce ADAM: Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the 
Old Testament; Jeremiah. 

~SmituH, F. H.: Christ and Science. 

SmytH, Newman: Christian Ethics; Through Science to Faith; 
Modern Belief in Immortality. 

Soper, E. D.: The Religions of Mankind. 

Spencer, M.: Pathways to Christian Unity. 

STAFForD, R. H.: Finding God. 

STEARNS, L. F.: Present Day Theology; Evidence of Christian Ex- 
perience. 

STREETER, B. H.: Foundations--A Statement of Christian Belief in 
Terms of Modern Thought. 

Swain, R. L.: What and Where Is God? 


Terry, M. S.: The New Apologetic. 

Tuomson, J. ArtHUR: Outline of Science; Science Old and New. 

TiIGERT, J. J.: Thetsm. 

TittetT, W. F.: Personal Salvation—Studies in Christian Doctrine 
Pertaining to the Spiritual Life. 


Wace, H.: Creative Christianity. 

Wattace, W.: Lectures and Essays on Natural Theology and Ethics. 
Warp, Harry F.: The Social Creed of the Churches. 

WarrFie_Lp, B. B.: The Lord of Glory. 

Watson, JoHN: God’s Message to the Human Soul. 


574 THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Waite, A. D.: The Warfare of Science and Theology. 

Witett, H. L.: Basic Truths of the Christian Faith; Our Bible: Its 
Origin, Character and Value. 

Witson, A. W.: The Witnesses to Christ. 

Witson, P. W.: The Church We Forget; The Christ We Forget. 

WINCHELL, A.: The Reconciliation of Science and Religion. 

Woop, W. H.: The Religion of Science. 


Youne, W. J.: When God and Man Meet. 


INDEX 


Abbott, Lyman, 118, 262, 351. 

Addison, Joseph, 113. 

UXEASHZ ME TOL. uly tee, O7u 210, 
253 | 

Agnosticism, 53; sometimes ex- 
presses faith, 489. 

PNTHES WA 535) 

Analogy between human and di- 
vine workers, III. 

Anthropomorphism, 183. 

Anti-theistic theories as to God 
and nature, 46 

Apocalyptic writings, God re- 
vealed in, 266. 

Arguments in proof of God’s ex- 
istence, 239. 

Aristotle, 79, 90. 

Arnold, Matthew, 58, 256, 383. 

‘Arnold, Thomas, 357. 

Astronomy, a pathway to God, 
131. 

Athanasius, 179. 

Athanasian creed, 457. 

Atheism, difficulties of, 123. 

Atoms, defined, Iotr. 

Augustine, St., 144, 190, 348, 478. 

Authority in religious faith, 
whence derived, 215. 

very. ac. W512, 


Babylonia, ancient religion of, 81. 

Bacon) Lord, 213,210. 

Barnes, Canon, 169. 

Bashford, Bishop J. W., 324. 

Beauty, a pathway to God, 120. 

Beets, J. Agar, I1I, 399. 

Beliefs and theories in religion, 
distinguished, 56. 

Berkeley, Bishop, idealistic phi- 
losophy, 222. 

Betelgeux, largest known. star, 


114. 
Bible, a divine-human Book, 37, 
gi2' 


Biology, a pathway to God, 138. 
Boscawen, quotations from, 81. 
Bowne, Borden P., 208, 224, 350, 


551. 
Breasted, J. H., 85. 
Bright, John, 268. 
Brooks, Phillips, 34. 
Brown, O. E., 427. 
Browning, Robert, 180. 
Bruce, A. Loy) 383, 4573 468, 524. 
Bryan, W. J., 116. 
Buckham, J. W., 119. 
Buddha, 413. 
Buddhism, &9. 


Cadman, S. Parkes, 174. 

Calderwood, 223, 235. 

Calvinism, 196; providential mis- 
sion of, 460; God of, 461. 

Campbell, Alexander, 425. 

Candler, W. A., 500. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 220, 268, 449. 

Carre: Hig) Bin273) 

Carter, Thomas, 299, 523. 

Case.) EV 561, 

Chalmers, Thomas, 251. 

Chance, impossible explanation 
of the universe, I17, 220. 

Chemistry, a pathway to God, 


134. 

Christ, relation of science to, 
149; divine sonship, 271; as in- 
terpreted by Paul, 272; as inter- 
preted by John, 274; the Logos 
(Word), 275, 401; God’s best 
interpreter and revealer, 35, 
393; doctrine of God, 395; di- 
vine-human person, 400, 406; 
the incarnation, 402; sceptical 
hypotheses concerning, 407; in- 
fluence of, 410; of experience, 
519, 521; of history, 526; sec- 
ond coming, 378. 


NORE Advocate, 323, 519. 


576 


Christian Century, 288, 462, 548 

Christianity, beneficent influence 
of, 492. 

Church, Christian, a divine-hu- 
man institution, 39, 417; defini- 
tion of, 417; a witness for God, 
419; the Church within the 
Church, 421; social mission of, 
424; its divisions, 425; its pri- 
mary credential, 432; its true 
catholicity, 433; its agencies, 
436; the Christian ministry, 
436; Christian schools, 440; 
Christian literature, 441. 

Clarks ale go; 

Clarke, W. N., 400, 506. 

Cleanthes, hymn to Zeus, 88. 

Coleridge Ss. Naan 

Comparative religions, 79. 

Confucianism, 89. . 

Conscience, a witness to God, 
1OQ7. 

Consensus gentium, 256. 

Cook iPad, 

Copernicus, 146. 

Cosmological argument, 245. 

Coutters\. Mand: My. Gptrsr. 

Creeds, value of, 447; reasons 
for, 447; contents of, 448; the 


historic, 450; helps or hin- 
drances)) to} faithi aso; 472; 
Apostles’ Creed, 451; Atha- 


nasian Creed, 457; Westmin- 

ster Confession of Faith, 460; 

the Thirty-nine Articles, 465. 
Criticism, Biblical, 29, 308. 
Crosby, Fanny, 552. 


Dale FR. We r2r,1530. 

Darwin, Charles, 108, 157, 250. 

Dawson, M., 160. 

Death, divine significance of, 555; 
a revealer of God, 40, 556; its 
educative value, 558; removes 
limitations to spirit, 559; as in- 
terpreted by the poets, 561. 

Deism, 52. 

Democratic ideals affect concep- 
tion of God, 28. 

Denny, Professor James, 319. 


THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Denominations, religious, 
and evil of, 429. 

Descartes, argument for divine 
existence, 228, 240. 

“Devolution” versus evolution, 


good 


159. 

Doubt, office of in religion, 477; 
dishonest, 480; honest, 484; 
when contributory to faith, 
483; due to temperament, 484; 
due to trying experiences, 485; 
common to and characteristic 
of developing youth, 487; its 
cause and cure, 493. 

Drummond, Henry, 148, 425. 

Dualism, anti-theistic, 48; the- 
istic, 61 


Edersheim’s enumeration of 
prophecies, 375. 

Egypt, ancient religion of, 85. 

Electrons, 104, 135. 

Elements in nature, Io1I, 156 

Ellwood, C. A., 179. 

Energy, 99. 

Erskine, Thomas, 321. 

Ether, 99. 

Ethics and religion, how related, 


92, 254. 

Everett, Edward, 90. 

Evil, physical and moral, defined 
and distinguished, 540; moral, 
as related to God, 543; moral, 
as related to human free will, 
544; physical, as related to God, 
545. 

Evolution, cause of doctrinal un- 
rest, 28; defined, 155; material- 
istic and theistic distinguished, 
157, 162; moral, 160; theistic, 
interpreted by scientists, 162; 
Christian attitude towards, 169. 

Experience, essential to knowl- 
edge of God, 503; man’s best 
teacher, 39, 504; Bible a book 
of experience, 506; God as re- 
vealed in, 508; related to 
prayer, 512; the essence of per- 
sonal religion, 522; results of, 
529; the solvent of religious 








INDEX 


perplexities, 531; a bond of 
Christian unity, 535. 


Fairbairn, A. M., 77, 106, 
215, 347, 354, 412, 447, 


189, 
545, 


9. 

Faith, Christian, restatements of, 
needed, 31; mutable and perma- 
nent elements in, 448; as related 
to reason, 477; reinforcement 
Of, 402; “heroism , of, ” 405; 
foundation of character, 496. 

Faraday, M., 146. 

Kaunce,W eH. Py 51. 

Bisher,¢ Gi) Pi) 145, $£70,-187, 218; 
227, 290, 318, 402. 

Biskes olin, 133,175; 164, 1813257, 

Fitchett, W. H., 191, 270. 

Foreknowledge, divine, 273, 381. 

Forsythe, P. T., 316, 522. 

Fosdick, Harry E LOS 1304, 

“Fundamentalists,” faith of, 158. 

Freud, 202. 


Galileo, 146. 

Galloway, George, 468. 

Garvie, A. E.,. 462. 

Geology, a pathway to God, 136, 
6 


163. 
Gibbon, Thomas, 496. 
Gilder, R. W., 500. 
Gladstone, W. i ee 
Glover, ie Say, 520, 
Gnosticism, 40. 
God, existence doubted, 27; idea 
of, innate, 34, 235; unknowable, 
53; theistic conception of, 55; 
dwelling-place of, 67; imma- 
nence, 63, 68; omnipotence, 
68; reinterpreted, 64; Father- 
hood of, 270,'°397; love of, 
270, 397; unity of, 276; spirit- 
uality of, 277; personality of, 
278; Triunity, 279; post-apos- 
tolic development, 281, 299; as 
revealed by Christ, 301, 394; 
in Christ, 400; through Christ, 
405; revealed in experience, 
514; conceived of as enemy, 
515; as, taskmaster, 5163) as 
friend, 517; as loving Father, 


577 


518; making God lovable, 519; 
nature and grace reveal the 
same God, 530; “Acts of God” 
misinterpreted, 546. 

Gordon, George A., 181, 208, 340, 
402. 

Gore, Charles, 31. 

Government, human and divine, 
206. 

Greece, ancient religion of, 87. 

Gregory, miracles of, 347. 

Grotius, Hugo, 90, 374. 

Gwatkin, H. M., 48, 91, 174. 


Hale, G. E., 150. 

Harnack, Professor, 402. 

Havergal) BOR 7552) 

Hearn, M., 499. 

mcarts the human, a Hated to 
God, 190. 


Heathen religions, Christian at- 


titude towards, 29; seekers 
after God, 76. 

Heavens, God revealed in the, 
hi2: 


Hebrew monotheism, 57; history 
a revelation of God, 264; rec- 
ords, superiority of, 289. 

Hegel, go. 

Helium, 132. 

Hibben, President J. G., 166. 

Higher Criticism of the Bible, 
308. 

Hilarion, miracles of, 346. 

Holy Spirit, advent of, 297. 

Homer, 87. 

bloughy Wael 1382: 

ELOWelliek,., 553: 

Hudson, C. E., 201. 

Huxley, Thomas, 161. 


Idealism and realism in philoso- 
phy and religion, 222, 224. 

Imagination, essential to concep- 
tion of God, 108. 

Immortality, revealed by death, 
550; as revealed by Christ, 556. 

Incarnation of Christ, 402. 

Inertia of matter, 141. 

Inge, Dean W. R., 469. 

Inorganic world, 99. 


578 


Inspiration of Scripture defined, 
307; traditional doctrine of, 
308; view of modern Biblical 
scholars, 310; the two views 
compared, 311; Biblical proof 
Of,) 93155 | practical’) proofiot, 
317; internal evidence of, 319. 

Intellect, the human, a path to 
God, 188. 


Jacks, Iu.) P.,'479, 533.0) 
James, Professor William, 201, 


529, 560. 
Jerome, miracles recorded by, 
346. 


Jesus, influence of, 410. 
Jevons, FP, B.;.70. 

Job, Book of, 267. 

John the Baptist, 486. 
Johnson, E. H., 200. 
Jones, Sir Henry, 31, 467. 


Kant? 138 j107;) 240: 

Keble, John, 122. 

Keen, Dr. W. W., 168. 
Keller, Helen, 34. 

Kelvin, Lord, 148, 218. 
Kepler, J., 127, 146. 

King, Henry Churchill, 52. 


Lecky, W. H., 90, 513. 

Lee, James W., 161, 221. 

Lee, Robert E., 253. 

Leibnitz, 549. 

Life, origin of, 106. 

Linneus, 107, 138. 

Locke, John, 34. 

Logic, value of in theology, 237. 

Longfellow, H. W., 97. 

Lotze, Hermann, 509. 

Lowell, James. Russell, 
562. 

Luther, Martin, 425, 498. 


90, 482, 


Magic in religion, 344. 

Mansell, 193. 

Martensen, view of miracles, 342. 
Martineau, James, 198, 382. 
Mary, the Virgin, 455. 
Materialism, 49. 


THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


Matter, 100. 

Maxwell, J. C., 146. 

McConnell, Bishop F. J., 236, 489. 

McCosh, James, 220, 227. 

McGiffert, A..C., 451. | 

Menzies, History of Religion, 88. 

Messiah, prophecies concerning, 
370; different interpretations 
of, 374; progress from lower 
to higher conceptions, 296. 

MM? SY 220: 

Millikan;,"R.: AL, 148,0167, 

Milton, John, 554. 

Mind, a function of spirit, not of 
matter, 217; evidence of in the 
physical universe, 218. 

Miracles, place in traditional the- 
ology, 330; argument from, 
330; of | the., Old Testament, 
3313. of Christ; 331: regarded 
variously as helps or hin- 
drances to faith, 334; reaction 
against, 339; by some criticized 
and discredited, 340; evidential 
value of, 342; adjustment to 
faith in an age of science, 344; 
ecclesiastical, 345. 

Moffatt, J. D., 464. 

Mohammedanism, 8g. 

Molecules defined, 1o1. 

Monism, materialistic and panthe- 
istic, 49. 

Monotheism, Hebrew and Chris- 
Lian 157, 

Moral argument for God’s exist- 
ence, 252. 

Moulton, W. J., 238. 

Mouzon, Bishop E. D., 507. 

Mozley, Canon, 361. 

Miller, John von, 527. 

Miller, Max, 92. 


Nature, defined, 97; the natural 
and the supernatural alike di- 
vine, 329; physical and human, 
both reveal God, 33, 184; spirit- 
ual interpretation of, 32, 118. 

New Testament revelation of 
God, 269. 

Newman, John Henry, 455, 534. 

Newton, Isaac, 131, 146. 


INDEX 


Occurrences and 
distinguished, 220. 

eldest amen revelation of God, 
263. 

Ontological argument for God’s 
existence, 242. 

Organic world, 106. 

Optimism in philosophy and the- 
ology, 549; its interpretation of 
evil, 548. 


concurrences 


Pantheism defined, 50. 
Parenthood, human and divine, 


204. 

Parkhurst, Chas. H., criticism of 
Calvinism, 464. 

Parliament of Religions, 93. 

Pasteur, L., 148. 

Paulsen, F., rejection of miracles, 
340. 

Pentateuch, its revelation of God, 
263. 

Perplexities, religious, 479; solved 
by experience, 531. 

Persia, ancient religion of, 81. 

Pessimism, its interpretation of 
existence, 549. 

Philo’s doctrine of the “Logos,” 


402. 

Philosophy defined, 214, 233; its 
relation to science, 216. 

Physics, a pathway to God, 134. 

Plato, 88, 213. 

Polytheism, 46. 

Pope, W.\B., 183, 331. 

Predestination and Divine fore- 
knowledge, 273. 

Premillenarians, 378. 

Progressive revelation, 285; as 
seen in the Old Testament, 288, 
292; as seen in the New Testa- 
ment literature, 294, 298. 

Prophecy, argument from, 362; 
defined, 363; more than predic- 
tion, 363; its moral element and 
value, 364; predictive prophecy, 
372; Messianic, 370; fulfilment 
in Christ, 370; examples of 
Messianic prophecy, 372; dif- 
ferent interpretations of, 374; 


579 


“accommodations” in New 
Testament use of Old Testa- 
ment, 379; reaction against the 
argument from prophecy, 377; 
moral value of, 383. 

Prophetical writings, God re- 
vealed in, 265. 

Prophets, their inspiration, 364; 
wherein their functions differed 
from those of the priests, 386; 
their passion for righteousness, 
384; their optimism, 388; their 
universalism, 388. 

Psalms, God revealed in, 268. 

Psychology, a pathway to God, 
186; the “New Psychology” as 
related to religion and Chris- 
tian faith, 201. 

Purdy bi ea2 


Quotations in New Testament 
from the Old Testament, 310. 


Radiant-matter, 104. 

KRAmSAaAV Wie h3e. 

Randolph, John, 496. 

Rashdaliyp hha 24. 

Rauschenbusch, Walter, 425. 

Realism in philosophy and theol- 
ogy, 220. 

Reason, office and value of in re- 
ligion, 41, 235. 

Religion, definition of, 73; origin 
of, 73; evolution of, 74; ubiq- 
uity and influence of, 76. 

Religions, comparative, 70 ; 
changed Christian attitude to- 
wards heathen religions, 29; the 
ethical test of truth in religion, 
89. 

Renan, E., 407, '527. 

Revelation, progressive, 285; con- 
ditioned and limited by human 
interpreters, in the Old Tes- 
tament, 288; in the New Testa- 
ment, 294. 

Rice; J. A.;.302,.506. 

Rice, W. N., 171, 195. 

Richards, WoC.) 282: 


580 


Romanes, G. J., 146. 
Rome, ancient religion of, 87. 
Ross, G. A. Johnston, 119, 146, 


296, 453. 


Sabatier, A., 93. 
Sanday, W., 74, 340. 
Scepticism invades the ministry, 


490. 

Schaff, Philip, 461. 

Schopenhauer, the pessimist, 549. 

Science, defined, 127; purpose of, 
128; wonders of, 134; relation 
to Christian faith, 28, 32, 143, 
149. 

Scientists, the proper teachers of 
science, 129; the Christian faith 
of, 146. 

Sex, applied to deity, 47, 206. 

Shaler IN Serr 36) 

Shedd, W. G. T., 309. 

Simpson, J. Y., 266, 469. 

Sin creates need of God, 51o. 

Smith, Francis H., 149. 

Smith, Sir George Adam, 294, 
372, 386. 

Smyth, Newman, 253, 404, 525. 

Socrates, 87. 

Soper, (1: 70, 

Sovereignty, divine, and service, 


399. 

Spencer, Herbert, 78, 165. 

stanley, Dean A.) P:, 361: 

Starbuck, E.!)D; Zor: 

Statement of faith, new, needed, 
467; recent, by Church of Scot- 
land, 465. 

Stearns, L. F.,' 310. 

Vea poo the Church’s need 
of, 4 

Stoic roeeine of Providence, 88. 

Stony, WoW ow rb2. 

Strauss, D, ica 173, 407, 527. 

Suffering, divine significance of, 
40, 539; educative and moral 
value of, 545; as interpreted by 
the poets, 552. 

Supernatural element in Chris- 
tianity, 329; natural and super- 
natural alike divine, 329; rein- 


THE PATHS THAT LEAD TO GOD 


forcement of the natural 
needed, 330; reinterpretation 
of, 348; new approach to, 348; 
faith in, reaffirmed, 353. 
Synoptic Gospels, 
Christ, 357. 


Teleological argument, 247. 

Tennyson, Alfred, 107, 483, 565. 

Theism, Christian, 59, 276; tradi- 
tional and modern forms, 62; 
how related to philosophy, 229. 

Thoburn, Bishop J. M., 323. 

Thomson, J. Arthur, 104, 114, 
130. 

Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, 


465. 

TDigert,, Bishop.7) ayes 

Torrey, RIAs 200: 

Townsend, Luther T., 488. 

Trinity, the divine, analogy fur- 
nished by psychology, 203; as 
set forth in the Creeds, 457; a 
post-Apostolic development of 
theology, 281, 301. 

Twenty-five Articles of Metho- 
dism, 465. 

Tillett, W. F., poems quoted, 209, 
414. 


Ueberweg, History of philosophy, 
S720: 


Virgin birth of Jesus, 455. 


Wallace, Lew, 355. 

Watson, John, 325, 473. 

Ward, Harry F., 425. 

Wesley, John, 172, 425. 

Westminster Confession of Faith, 
460; reinterpreted, 463; at- 
tempts at revision, 463. 

White, Alexander, 455. 

White, Gilbert, I09. 

Whittier, John Greenleaf, 423, 
6 


503. 
Will, the human, a pathway 
God, 193. 


approach to, — 


INDEX 581 


Winchell, Alexander, 163. World War, the, as related to 
Wisdom literature of Old Testa- God, 27. 

ment, its revelation of God, 

267. Zeus, hymn to, by Cleanthes, 88. 
Wordsworth, William, 118. Zinzendorf, Count, 425. 


y Peak 
: \ 








Date Due 











eological 


2 01012 1913 


L 





1 107 





